


if we must die (oh, let us nobly die)

by everywordnotsaid



Category: SEAL Team (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Clay Spenser, Torture, a lot of hurt not much comfort tbh, whoops I'm back
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:42:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26890858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everywordnotsaid/pseuds/everywordnotsaid
Summary: Which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.
Relationships: Brian Armstrong & Clay Spenser
Comments: 103
Kudos: 289





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> So tbh I have another fic going on I really should be focusing on finishing but I'm excited about this one and I miss this show! I probably won't be updating this as regularly as my fics in the past, but I have a lot of it drafted so I'll try and keep the chapters coming. Also, the description comes from the poem Crush, by Richard Siken. Enjoy!

Clay wakes up. He’s lying face down on the floor, head pounding in a relentless aching rhythm that feels a little bit like someone’s trying to hammer a nail directly into his brain. He tries to open his eyes and immediately slams them shut again as the world sways and spins around him, stomach roiling. His mouth is dry and stale and his neck hurts and he can’t remember how he got here. His first thought is that Sonny probably convinced him to stay at the Bulkhead for one to many tequila shots, and now he’s paying for his sins. It would explain the fact that everything before he just woke up is a blank, and the miserable headache. He wonders whose bathroom floor he passed out on in the end, his or Sonny’s.

Shifting a little he grimaces as his body protests the movement; his shoulders burn and throb, caught in an uncomfortable position. He tries to move his arms, and that’s when he realizes his shoulders ache because his hands are tied behind his back, and that it isn’t just his vision rocking back and forth but the ground underneath him. Quick investigation shows that his ankles are similarly secured. Suddenly the foggy confusion drops away, as his memories come flooding back to him. Bravo had gotten spun up for a mission in Iraq, picking up an ISIL HVT on the CIA’s shitlist. They’d hit the target house, but something had gone wrong. Clay closes his eyes, grunting as an icy hot stab of pain echoes behind his left eye, and tries to focus. There…There was a IED, he thinks. Clay had been clearing the back room and he was the first to see it. He’d yelled for everyone to get out, he’d been too deep into the house to make it out the front door so he’d exfiled through a window, gotten caught in the tail end of the blast which explains the splitting head and the general confusion. 

Something hits him hard then, like a freight train or a speeding car. Like the ground falling out from underneath your feet. He can’t remember seeing if the rest of the team cleared the building before the bomb went off. He knows they heard his warning, made eye contact with Ray behind him, saw him start to go for the door, but the rest is a blank. For a second blinding white-hot panic threatens to consume him, because goddammit he can’t _remember_ , but he takes a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth and reaches for the cool rational part of himself that takes over when he operates. The part that isn’t going to fall to pieces right now. Just because he doesn’t remember seeing them get out doesn’t mean they didn’t. They’re all capable experienced operators, there’s no reason for them not to have made it out. Worrying about them isn’t productive, he needs to worry about his own situation right now, and what he’s going to do about it. Judging by the fact that’s he tied up in the back of a truck, it’s probably safe to say that he wasn’t picked up by friendlies. 

He rolls over onto his side, trying to get a better look at his surroundings. Everything is hazy with dust and heat and a probable concussion, and Clay squints against the way his vision shifts and wavers. It looks like he’s in the back of an old FMTV, sunlight filtering weakly through the worn canvas bonnet. There’s a few crates stacked around him, but they’re all sealed tightly shut and besides that there’s nothing. 

He takes a deep breath, pushing down the panic that threatens to rise again, and takes stock. His TAC vest, helmet, and both his guns are gone, as is the knife he keeps in his boot. He’s wearing his fatigues and shoes though, so at least there’s that. Still, there’s not way he’s going to be freeing himself at the moment, and he doesn’t like his chances if he tries to jump out of the back of a moving vehicle in the middle of god knows where. There’s no guarantee he’s still anywhere near where Bravo inserted, let alone in Iraq. He has no idea how long he’s been out and in the mean time they could’ve moved him through the border into Syria or into Afghanistan. So instead he settles in to get a little rest while he can, trying to get as comfortable as he can trussed up like a turkey on the hard metal floor. It works, sort of, and he dozes off into a light restless sleep for a few hours. 

Clay’s woken by the truck rolling to an abrupt halt, sending him flying back painfully into the sharp corner of a crate. He grimaces, that’s definitely going to bruise, but forces himself to roll awkwardly onto his stomach to try and stand up as he hears the cab door slam open and footsteps start to make their way around to the back of the vehicle. He’s just gotten himself to his knees when the canvas is yanked open letting in bright harsh sunlight, and the barrel of an AK is shoved in his face. He squints against the sun, trying to get a good look at his location, but his view is quickly blocked by a man in camo pants and a dusty faded tunic, who pushes aside the gun and steps up into the truck in front of Clay. He also has an AK, slung casually across his shoulder, but he doesn’t point it at Clay. Instead he gives him a quick once over, before calling over his shoulder to his friend in Arabic, 

“ _Is this the American soldier? I thought he would look more impressive._ ”

Clay understands it of course, but doesn’t give away his advantage by responding. Instead he gathers up a good wad of mucus and spits on the man’s shoes, grinning a little. It earns him a small degree of satisfaction and the butt of a rifle to his temple. He goes down hard, head ringing as black spots dance in front of his eyes. The hit must have opened a gash in his head because he can already feel the warm slide of blood down the side of his skull, onto his neck, soaking the collar of his shirt. If he wasn’t concussed before he definitely is now. Before he can gather himself there are hands jerking him up and someone shoves a bag down over his head, plunging him into darkness. It’s thick and heavy and smells faintly of gunpowder and stale sweat, making him wrinkle his nose. 

They pull him out of the FMTB, bound feet hitting the ground heavily as they half-drag him stumbling across the shifting sand. It’s even hotter out of the truck, the air warm and thick under his hood, and he has to force himself to take shallow breathes as the fabric clings to his mouth with every inhale. He tries to focus his hearing and see if he can get any clue as to where he is, but it’s nearly impossible to catch anything over the noise of the idling truck and people shouting and the ringing that stills lingers in his ears. 

After a minute of walking or so they pause, and there’s the sound of a door creaking open as they move from the oppressive midday heat to a slightly cooler room. Then there’s a flight of stairs and a hallway and another door, and finally the bag comes off. Clay blinks a little against the sudden change in light, and has just enough time to catch a glimpse of a long crumbling hallway lined with doors before he’s shoved roughly into a small room, tumbling ungracefully onto his ass for the second time today and he’s really starting to get tired of getting thrown around like a sack of potatoes. The door clangs heavily shut behind him with the distinctive click of a lock being turned, and again he is alone. 

The assholes that grabbed him didn’t do him the favor of untying his wrists or ankles, and so he’s left to earthworm himself up awkwardly until he’s leaning against a wall. Once he’s situated he casts a quick glance around his new bunk for the time being: the room is small, maybe five feet by seven feet, and empty except for a thin pallet mattress in one corner and a dented bucket in the other. The only light is from a tiny high set window in the wall, and whatever filters in from under the door. All in all, Clay’s slept in worse places and at the very least he doesn’t have to share it with Sonny’s snoring. The thought is almost enough to make Clay laugh, and in the next breath want to cry. But he’s a goddamn fucking Navy SEAL, a tier one operator, so instead he inhales deep breaths of stale musty air till the sting in his eyes recedes. He’s a SEAL, he’s trained for this, he can handle it. 

Once he’s got himself under control he takes a second to test the cuffs around his wrists but finds no give, and the knots at his ankles are similarly tight and solid. They’re going to come for him eventually he knows, he’s to tempting of an asset to leave sitting around in a cell, so all he can do for the moment is be prepared and wait. So he does, settling back against the wall and trying to slow his pounding heart and gather himself for what comes next.

For a long time nothing happens. The waiting drags on him, to the point where he almost wants them just to interrupt the monotony, get it over with. The thing with waiting, Clay finds, is it leaves a lot of time to think. Think about the house and the bomb and how he didn’t see if Ray made it to the door, if any of his team got out. They’re alive, he tells himself when his mind starts to wander too far down that path. They’re alive, and probably kicking in doors looking for him right. They have to be alive, because if they’re not then he has nothing to hold on to, and he _needs_ something to hold on to. So they’re fine, he decides. Maybe a little banged up but still breathing and pissed off as hell. That’s the only way he’s going to get through this. They’re fine, he tells himself, and almost believes it too.

Eventually he nods off again, drifting uneasily in an uncertain half-sleep. 

A few hours later the door grinds open again, startling him out of his doze. Two men, different from earlier, walk into his cell. One of them looks young and a little nervous, holding his gun awkwardly, while the other sports an impressive scar on his right cheekbone and a limp. And Clay’s glock tucked in his waistband, Clay notes as Scarface cuts the bindings at his ankles while the kid holds a gun on him. Looks like the fucker likes to take prizes. Once Clay’s legs are free the bag comes out again and then he’s being dragged to his feet and bundled out the hall and down another flight of stairs where he’s shoved into a chair, his wrists quickly secured to the back before the bag comes off.

He’s in what looks to be an old classroom, scarred and battered nearly out of recognition by war. There’s a chalkboard at the front of the room though, and a few desks still scattered around, some tipped over onto their sides. His heart flutters in his chest as adrenaline starts to pump, and he remembers the advice his SERE instructor had given him during training, focus on a spot on the wall and let your mind drift. That doesn’t sound so hard. 

Beside him the men who brought him down converse rapid fire in Arabic. Clay tries to keep up, but his head is spinning, still half asleep and they’re speaking an obscure dialect now that’s hard to keep up with on a good day. Still he catches a few words, enough to recognize the name of the town he’d been grabbed from, and soldier. After a few minutes scar-face turns to him, obviously the leader in this situation.

“What was your team doing at _al-Kasrah_?”

The man asks, in broken English. Clay stares stolidly back at him. 

“Clay Spenser, Special Warfare Officer First class, identification number 1401770511.”

He says evenly, staring past him to a pockmark in the concrete of the far wall. It looks like a bullet hole, maybe. The man punches him hard in the jaw, nearly rocking him out of the chair. He can feel the impact of it ringing in his teeth, taste salt and iron in his mouth. He sniffs, blood pooling uncomfortably in the back of his throat, spits a mouthful out onto the dusty floor by his feet. 

“Your team knew of the location of our bomb maker. Where you get this information?”

The man repeats, nearly shouting now. His breath is warm and fetid, and Clay tries to turn his face away. 

“My name is Clay Spenser-”

He begins again, but he doesn’t even get the chance to finish before another blow comes, this time to his stomach. It knocks the air out of his lungs and for a moment all he can do is wheeze helplessly as he tries to catch his breath. It continues on like that for a bit, asking questions and smacking him around when he doesn’t answer. Clay keeps his eyes on that concrete wall and recites his name rank and number till they don’t sound like real words anymore.

After they strip him down to his waist and bring out the industrial grade cable he checks out. Retreats somewhere deep inside of himself to escape it. When he opens his eyes the dusty classroom is gone, and he’s on a sandy beach, water splashing lightly over his toes. It’s a place he’s been once before. 

“Hey,” a familiar says from behind him. “Don’t take this the wrong way but I was sorta hoping I wasn’t gonna see you again quite so soon.” 

Clay feels his heart jump into his throat and he slowly turns away from the ocean. Brian’s sitting in the sand, shoes gone and pants rolled up around his ankles, looking exactly the same as the day he died. Still wearing that stupid cowboy-ass shirt too. His hair shifts a little bit in the gentle breeze that’s picked up from somewhere as he grins up at Clay. 

“Brian,” 

He rasps, like an idiot. And Brian’s been gone two years now but seeing him, sun-tanned and freckled and perfectly whole, it hurts like the first day all over again. 

“Yup. That’s my name dumbass.” Brian quips good-naturedly, before patting the sand next to him. “Come on, take a load off.” 

Slowly Clay obeys, dropping down beside him. The tide sweeps up the beach after him, all froth and sea-foam, before receding with a comforting rush. It’s hot here too, but not like the desert is hot. 

“Kinda got myself in a bit of a situation.”

He says hesitantly, looking away from Brian out to where the distant blurry line where the sky meets the ocean. Brian snorts, leaning over to knock his shoulder lightly against Clay’s.

“You always did have a talent for understating things.” 

He teases, but there’s no heat to it. Clay offers him a small smile, shaking his head but not correcting him. 

“Is it cool….is it cool if I hang out here for a bit with you?” 

He asks, and Brian’s expression softens. 

“Yeah man,” He says, a little too gently. “Always.” 


	2. chapter two

When Clay opens his eyes again he’s back in his cell, and his hands are untied. It must be night because there’s no sun coming through the window, plunging the room into blackness. He can feel his shirt sticking to raw skin across his stomach and chest where they lashed him till they drew blood, and when he flexes his hands he finds he has a few new broken fingers. But he’s okay, he thinks. He’s still in one piece where it matters. 

Dragging himself slowly painfully up he stumbles over to the sad looking mattress in the corner, collapsing into it. He’s about to doze off when a voice sounds somewhere near his head.

“Hey, is someone in there?”  
  
A man’s voice whispers. Clay jerks awake, eyes darting around the dark room. It takes him a long second to realize that he is alone, and the voice didn’t come from inside his cell, but through the wall. He frowns, there’s no accent to the words, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a trap. Plenty of radicalized Americans they could use to get info from him. He stays silent, and after a few seconds the voice sounds again. 

“Look I can hear you moving around in there, come on. You’re American aren’t you? I heard you, earlier.” 

He’s getting louder now, an edge of desperation cutting into his voice, and Clay winces. The last thing they need is this guy bringing the guards back down on their asses. 

“Okay, yeah. I’m American. Just-just keep your voice down alright?”

He hisses finally, deciding to risk it. Even if the guy is a plant, they won’t be getting anything out of Clay here either. 

“Yeah, yeah, sorry.” The man replies, dropping down to a whisper again, but Clay can hear the relief in his voice anyways. “My name’s Sean, Sean Nowak.”

The name sounds familiar and Clay frowns, searching his memory until a headline springs to mind. 

“You’re that journalist that got grabbed out of, uh, Northern Syria a couple of months ago, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Nowak replies sardonically. “Pretty stupid fucking move on my part if you ask me.”

Clay can’t help but snort a little bit; good to see a few months of captivity hasn’t ground the guy completely into pulp if he’s still with it enough to make jokes. 

“How about you, what’d you do to end up in this shithole?”

Clay pauses, not wanting to give away too much, still not sure if he can completely trust the other man. Better to keep the truth under wraps, at least for now. 

“I’m a journalist too. Do some freelance work for GlobalPost and AP. Grabbed me near the border.”

He lies, only feeling a little bad about it. 

“Tough break man. Guess that’s we get for trying to be heroes.” Nowak sounds genuinely sympathetic and Clay’s stomach twists. “What’s your name? Maybe I’ve seen some of your work.” 

“Nah, probably not. I’m pretty new to the game. It’s, uh,” He pauses for half a second, scrambled brain struggling to produce something, “It’s Jason Wright.” 

He doesn’t know why he uses Jason’s name out of all the names in the world, it spills out of his mouth almost before he realizes what he’s said and then it’s too late to take it back. Nowak thankfully doesn’t seem to notice his slip. 

“Well Jason Wright, welcome to hell. Enjoy your stay, so far I have to say it’s zero out of ten stars for me on yelp.”

Clay actually does laugh at that despite himself, it just sounds so much like something Sonny would say.

“Yeah, doesn’t seem the type of place to leave a mint on your pillow huh.”

“Maybe a severed head.”

Nowak throws back, and the banter is so familiar that for a second Clay can almost forget where exactly they both are. Then he shifts wrong and his body swiftly reminds him, and he lets out a small groan. He swallows it quickly, but the damage is already done. 

“Hey, you okay?”

Nowak asks. 

“Yeah, fine. Just roughed me up a little bit.” Clay replies shortly. The pain is good; it’s a reminder of where he is, of what he is. Now’s not the time get all sentimental with someone who he’s not even sure is on his side. He can’t afford to be distracted. “Look, we should get some rest.” 

“Alright, yeah, you’re right.” Nowak replies, so quiet through the wall Clay barely hears the words. “And Jason, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m kinda glad you’re here. Sucked being alone.” 

Clay wakes up to the next morning to a few weak rays of sunlight filtering through his window, bathing the dull grey concrete of his room in a faint buttery yellow. His head still hurts, and sleep has only made the all the bruises and aches of yesterday seize up in the pre-dawn cool. The lash marks have started to scab over and pull uncomfortably when he moves too quickly. He grimaces a little, but forces himself to sit up. His lips are cracked and dry, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. He’s definitely dehydrated, and his stomach lets out a loud rumble, which reminds him that it’s been a while since his last meal too. In the next room over he can hear Nowak shifting as he starts to wake, but thankfully he doesn’t try to start another conversation. 

The first thing he does is take a lap of his cell, inspecting the room for any sort of weakness or tools he could use. The handle of the bucket is slightly loose and he could probably wiggle it free if need be, but it’s too bulky to use to pick the lock on the door. Still, he makes a note of it. Other then that there’s nothing of use though, and after a second inspection he’s forced to admit defeat. 

The movement’s helped loosen up his sore muscles a bit, and he starts to rotate through reps of push-ups and sit-ups, more to have something to do then anything else. He tires quicker then he usually would though, and has to quit after just a few rounds. The sweat stings at the fine cuts on his face, and the scabs on his chest, and he sits back against the wall to catch his breath. 

“Hey,” he calls through the wall. “Nowak, you have any idea where we are?”

Nowak responds, sounding a little surprised. 

“Uh, not sure to be honest. They got me when I was in Alhora, but they’ve moved me at least twice since then. Probably still in Syria though.” 

It makes sense, there’s more of an ISIL stronghold left in Syria, and they’d want to get him as far away from where they grabbed him as possible.   
  
At what he guesses is about noon somebody cracks open the door, shoving a bowl of watery looking soup and a hunk of bread in through the gap before slamming it shut again. Clay leans over and picks the bowl up, snagging the bread too. They didn’t provide utensils so he drinks the soup straight out of the bowl. It’s bland and flavorless and the bread is stale, but it takes the edge off the ache in his belly. 

They come for him again in the afternoon. It’s camo pants accompanying scar-face today instead of the kid, and he seems to take a little extra glee in manhandling Clay down the stairs. He pays closer attention to the route they take this time, remembering which turns they make, how many steps they take. Marks the moments when the noise of a street gets louder as they pass a doorway and files it away for later. He knows Bravo is looking for him, but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to sit around on his ass and wait for them like some damsel in distress. 

They take him back to the same dilapidated classroom, and Clay’s starting to guess that this is the remnants of what used to be a school. It goes pretty much the same as yesterday, they rough him up and yell questions he can’t- _won’t_ \- answer in his face and he recites his name rank and ident number back at them till his voice dies in his throat. 

They keep at it for a couple of hours before they get tired or bored or too frustrated to continue, dragging him back to his cell and throwing him in unceremoniously. They’re pissed off, Clay realizes with a grim sort of satisfaction. Pissed he isn’t breaking, isn’t giving them anything. Not used to their prisoners putting up such a fight. He’s just pulling himself together when Nowak’s voice filters through the thin wall. 

“Damn, they really don’t like you. Don’t think they’ve ever pulled me two days in a row.” 

“Must’ve done something to piss them off.” 

Clay throws back off-handedly, wincing a little as he manages to collapse onto his mattress. His headache is back, and he’s thirsty again. Of course, the real reason he’s getting so much TLC is because of all the juicy intel he has in his head as a tier one operator, but Nowak doesn’t need to know that. 

“You’re…you’re really handling all this well.” Nowak says, almost cautiously. “The first couple of weeks I was a complete fucking mess, man. Honestly I’m still a complete mess, but you-you’re like the goddamn iceman over there.”

“Yeah well, I don’t think we’ll be here much longer.” 

Clay replies, trying to find a way to lie down that doesn’t hurt. There’s a long pause.

“Look, I thought the same thing the first few days they had me and I’m going on four months now. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

Nowak says, half-irritated half hopeful. Clay smiles a little, like he’s telling an inside joke. Which, in a way, he sort of is. 

“I don’t know, man. Guess I just have a feeling is all.”

The next morning they come for him early. He’s still half asleep when the door opens, barely able to keep his feet under him as they bring him down to the classroom. They’re getting sloppier, he thinks, not bothering to cuff his wrists for the trip this time, just pulling the bag over his head. He counts the turns they make again, two lefts and down a flight of stairs, twenty steps from the stairway to the door. They’re getting sloppier, but he’s not. 

They throw him down in the chair, roughly securing his hands behind his back again. When the bag is removed Clay can see that there’s a new set up today, a bucket of water sits on one of the remaining desks, and a car battery next to it. Clay swallows. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going. 

They ask him the same set of questions again, how did they know where HVT was going to be, where are they getting their information, what targets are they planning to hit next. And Clay gives them the same response. Name rank and number. 

Camo pants picks up the bucket of water, pouring it over his shoulders and chest. The waters cold, soaking through his filthy shirt, and Clay can’t help but shiver- it’s still early morning, and the desert heat hasn’t yet set in. He takes a deep breath, trying to brace himself for what’s about to come. He’s been tazed before, he tells himself as Scar-face approaches him with the cattle prod, it can’t be much worse then that. 

He’s very, very wrong. The minute the prongs touches his damp skin he feels every muscle in his body seize up, pulling taut against the ropes keeping him in his chair. It’s like the feeling of hitting your funny bone wrong multiplied by a million, like he’s burning and freezing at the same time. He can feel every nerve in his body screaming for release, he thinks he might be screaming too but he can’t tell over the static crackling in his ears. 

When the prod finally pulls away he goes slack immediately, and he’s pretty sure the only thing keeping him in the chair at this point is his cuffs. He’s panting like he’s just run a marathon, bright auras flashing in front of his eyes. They don’t ask him any more questions after that, and Clay gets the sense that they’re not so much doing this just for the information anymore. After the third shock he goes to the beach, leaves the pain somewhere far and distant behind him. 

“What do you think about the Nowak guy?” Clay asks, splashing at the waves with one bare foot. “Think I can trust him?”

Brian laughs a little, leaning back on his hands. 

“I think you like him.” 

Clay grins back, shaking his head. 

“Yeah, I guess so. Guy’s pretty hardcore for a journalist.”

He says, falling into the sand beside Brian. Brian takes a handful of yellow-gold grains and tosses them lazily at Clay. 

“Pretty hard-core, says the badass over here,”

Clay shakes his head, brushing the sand off legs, shaking it out of the folds of his clothes. 

“Aw come on Armstrong, you’re gonna make me blush.” 

Brian pauses for a second, then grins a little crookedly, left side of his mouth tugging higher then the right. 

“Fear of spiders is called arachnophobia” He intones, schooling his face into an expression of mock seriousness. “Fear of heights is acrophobia, and fear of Clay fucking Spenser is just called common sense.” 

Clay snorts, laughter bubbling in his throat, but joins in easily. 

“Brian Armstrong once threw a hand grenade that killed five Taliban-and then it went off.” 

He shoots back. Brian’s brow furrows as he considers for a second, 

“Clay Spenser is the reason Waldo’s in hiding.” 

They continue on like that for a while, till they’re laughing too hard to keep going. It’s sort of a tradition they started, back on their first tour in Afghanistan. When things were really bad, when they were really scared. It always worked back then to make them feels a little better, make things feel a little less grim. 

Eventually though the laughter dies away, leaving behind something heavier in it’s wake. Something sadder, maybe. 

Clay sniffs, looks down at the ground. 

“I wish,” he starts, feeling almost guilty. “I wish you weren’t dead.” 

Brian glances over and sighs, putting a warm hand on Clay’s shoulder and squeezing tight. 

“Yeah buddy. Me too.”

Clay wakes up as they’re taking him back upstairs. There’s an arm hooked under each of his, his legs trailing on the floor behind him. His shirt his still damp, with sweat and water and blood, and he can feel burn marks pulsing along his collarbone and chest. 

This time when they throw him in his cell he doesn’t move for a long time. He drifts for a little while he thinks, not at the beach, but not quite in his body either. When he comes to it’s to the sound of Nowak talking. 

“-I really hope you’re not dead. Cause that would really suck for me if you were dead, you know, I’d have to go back to talking to myself and that’s really not as fun as talking to someone else and I don’t think I’m ready to be that level of crazy-” 

“I’m not dead.”

He manages, throat raw and sore. Nowak pauses in his rambling. 

“Oh, okay. That’s-that’s good.” There’s a long moment of silence and then he asks a little hesitantly. “You… you alright? It uh, it sounded pretty bad today.” 

“I’m fine.” 

Clay says stiffly, in a tone that clearly indicates the conversation is over. He barely manages to drag himself over to his cot before he passes out again. 

That night he dreams he’s back home. Back with his team. They’re having a barbecue in Jason’s backyard, drinking and laughing and nothing hurts. Brian’s there too, alive and grinning and at peace while he chats with Ray and Trent. Jameelah and RJ and Mikey playing soccer in the background with Brock and Sonny, while Cerb yips at the sidelines. Clay turns to Jason, knowing this isn’t real but not really caring.

“I wish I was here, with you guys.”

He says. Jason shrugs, smile playing at his lips, and hands him another beer. 

“You’re always with us, man. Always.” 

When Clay wakes up his face is wet, and he can taste salt on his lips. 


	3. chapter three

The next day his captor’s apparently decide to change up the routine. The usual delivery of broth and stale bread doesn’t come in the afternoon, just a small bowl of tepid water. Trying to starve him out, Clay guesses. He takes a small sip of the water and sets the rest aside for later. It’s better to ration it then drink it all now and need it later. 

After about an hour he hears footsteps in the hallway again, he can tell from the odd dragging hesitation in between the steps that it’s Scar-face, but they walk past his door, stopping instead in front of Nowak’s. Clay’s stomach drops, and he pushes himself painfully to his feet, rushing to the front of the room. 

“Hey,” Clay yells through the wall, pounding a fist against the door hard to enough to make the bones of his hand ache. “Hey, take me you assholes, take me!” 

They ignore him though, no matter how much he shouts and pounds his fists and insults their mothers. There’s the sound of the door creaking open, and then a small frightened huff of air. To his credit Nowak doesn’t scream or beg or plead for them not to take him, and Clay feels a seed of respect start to bloom in his chest. 

After the footsteps again recede down the hallway Clay stops yelling, falling back against the wall and sliding to the ground. He grits his teeth in frustration, pounding his head back against the wall once, twice. He feels so fucking helpless and he hates it. Hates sitting trapped in this tiny room waiting for a rescue, hates not being able to help Nowak, hates not being able to help himself. It should be him in that classroom, not some poor journalist who had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The screaming starts a few minutes later, and Clay screws his eyes shut and digs his fingernails deep enough into his palms to draw blood. 

It feels like it lasts forever, but eventually the screams stop and a little after that the footsteps come back. This time it sound like they’re dragging something, like a body maybe, and Clay feels nauseous. The door opens and there’s the thud of something heavy and person sized being thrown on the floor. 

“Hey,” Clay says immediately. “Hey, Nowak, you alright?”

There’s a low groan and a hacking cough but no response. 

“Come on man, talk to me, you good?”

Clay presses, leaning his forehead against the wall separating them. 

“You know Jason,” Nowak says after a long pause, voice rough and unsteady. “I’m starting to think they really don’t like us around here.”

Clay sits back a little, letting out a strained laugh. He’s surprised by how sincere the relief that wells up in his chest is. 

“Yeah, good guess on that one buddy. What tipped you off?” 

“Hmmm,” Nowak says, dryly, “Maybe, and this is just off the top of my head, the torture?”

Clay snorts, shaking his head despite himself. Seems like he’s doing okay. It’s honestly impressive that after four months of this shit he’s still able to make jokes. For a while there’s silence, only punctuated by Nowak’s labored breathing. After a few minutes Nowak breaks it though.

“I just wanted to, uh, say thanks. For what you did, for standing up for me back there. It was…” He trails off for a moment, like he’s looking for the right words. “I don’t know if I’d have been brave enough to do the same thing.”

He settles on finally, sounding very sincere. 

“It’s fine.” Clay says, with a shrug, and only a hint of bitterness. “Not like it did any good anyways.” 

“Can I ask you why you did it? Not to be too blunt but it’s not like we’re friends or anything. Be no skin off your nose to let me take the hit for once.” 

It’s a fair question, really, considering Nowak thinks Clay is just another civilian caught up in bad shit. The real answer of course is that he did it because that’s Clay’s job. To take the hit so other people don’t have to, to run into danger not away from it. But Clay can’t say that so instead he says, 

“Guess I just figured it was fair. You’ve been here a lot longer then me.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.” Nowak says, not sounding like he quite believes it but leaving well enough alone which Clay is grateful for. “Looks like I owe you one.” 

“No,” Clay says softly. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Clay sleeps fitfully that night, tossing and turning on his thin mattress. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember it.

They don’t feed him the next day either, just shove another bowl of water through his door. They don’t take either of them out of their rooms either, and while that should be a welcome reprieve it just makes Clay nervous. He doesn’t like that they’re breaking routine, that usually means bad things are about too happen. Or at least worse things.

All there is to do is sit around and think about his team and whether they’re getting close to finding him (whether they’re even alive) and try not to think about the gnawing aching hunger in his stomach. It works, sort of. He tries to distract himself with planning his escape. The kid is obviously a weak link, nervous and unsure and perhaps more easily manipulated into empathy. Scar-face is more aggressive, but also overly confident, and his limp makes him an easy target. Plus, he’s taken to walking around with Clay’s gun tucked in his pants like an idiot, if he can get him alone he might be able to use it against him. The trick is to figure out how to bring Nowak along with him. It’ll be harder with a civilian in tow, but it isn’t in Clay to just leave him here to rot.

By the third day with no food and barely any water the hunger has coalesced into a gaping hole in Clay’s stomach, no longer an ache but a physical knot he can nearly feel in his gut. Usually it wouldn’t be so bad, but it isn’t like he’d been eating well before they cut off his meals, and coupled with the physical abuse he feels like crap. He knows that they’ve still been feeding Nowak, knows he feels guilty about it.

“Hey, I could not eat too.” Nowak says, after they deliver his meal. “You know, hunger strike, solidarity and all that.”

Clay tilts his head to the side from where he’s laying on his bed. 

“That’s a stupid fucking idea Nowak.” He mumbles, not unkindly. “Then we’d both just be hungry. Wouldn’t do either of us any good.”

“I don’t know, I feel like things are always easier when you’re not doing them alone, I guess.” 

Nowak says softly, earnestly, and Clay feels a spark of something dangerously like affection in his chest. He stamps it down before it has a chance to grow, though, because he can’t afford to be distracted now. Not if he wants to get either of them through this. And maybe it’s just because it reminds him too much of something else, another earnest act of kindness he hadn’t been expecting and hadn’t wanted to accept. Maybe it reminds him too much of the people he’s missing right now, and it aches a little in his chest, like a scab that’s not quite healed over yet. 

“You were right, earlier. We aren’t friends, so lets stop pretending we are.”

And he says it because it’s true, but also because he wants to be cruel. Because he doesn’t want to like Nowak. As soon as the words leave his mouth he regrets them though, guilt curling in the pit of his stomach. It’s not Nowak’s fault he isn’t who Clay wants him to be. Nowak doesn’t say anything in response, and Clay rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Wonders why he’s being such an asshole. 

“Nowak, that’s uh… eastern European isn’t?” 

Clay asks a little while later, still feeling guilty for earlier. He hopes Nowak recognizes the apology in it, the peace offering. Nowak’s response comes immediately, and there’s no trace of reproach in it. Apparently he’s the forgive and forget type.

“Yeah, Polish actually. My grandparent’s immigrated to the states in 40’s, to escape the war. It fucked ‘em up pretty bad too, a lot of their friends and stuff didn’t make it out. My Grandma still made the best pierogi’s though. Her cheese and potatoes dumplings, man, I’d kill for one right about now-”

Clay groans a little, and Nowak swallows the rest of his sentence. 

“Oh shit, yeah, sorry. Wasn’t thinking...”

Clay sighs, rolling onto his side so his forehead presses against the wall. 

“It’s fine. You ever visited? Poland, I mean.”

Nowak’s silent for a long time and when he finally replies it’s almost bittersweet. 

“No, never had the time I guess. But I always wanted to. Told myself when went I was gonna make the time though, take some vacation days. Really get to know the place.” He pauses then, silent for a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is more downtrodden then Clay’s heard before. More hopeless. “Guess it’s a little late for that now, huh.”

“Hey. We are going make it out of here.” Clay says, as earnest as he’s able, mostly believing it too. “Just gotta hold on a little longer. There’s people out there looking for us.” 

“Yeah.” Nowak replies, not sounding entirely convinced. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” 

They talk a lot, after that, about all sorts of things. Politics and food and the best countries to travel in. About literature (Clay likes Dostoevsky, Nowak thinks he’s a repetitive hack) and music (they can both agree that American Beauty was the Grateful Dead’s best album) about anything and everything really, talking just to hear the sound of someone else’s voice. To keep the fear, and the hopelessness at bay. And Clay finds that Brian was right, he does like Nowak. Likes him a lot. 

“Do you have somebody waiting for you at home? Wife, girlfriend?”

Nowak asks after a while, catching Clay a little off guard. 

“No. No, uh, not anymore. Work got in the way.” He replies, voice a little rough, because it’s still painful to think about Stella, about what could have been. “What about you?”

“Yeah, actually. Her name’s Sophia, been married five years coming up in September. She’s…she’s the best thing in my life, y’know? I keep-I keep wondering what she’s thinking about right now. She hated me working out here, kept telling me something bad was gonna happen to me eventually. Guess she was right, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. She usually is. ”

And Clay can almost hear the smile in his voice as he talks about her, the tenderness there, and he feels his throat tighten a little bit. Has to clear it before he can speak again. 

“Why’d you keep doing it then? Putting yourself in the line of danger like that? There’s a lot of safer gigs you could get.”

He asks, genuinely curious. 

“I don’t know, why do any of us do it? Guess we’re fucking crazy maybe.” Nowak says, laughing a little. But the laughter fades after a second and his voice takes on a more somber tone. “I guess… I guess I just don’t want them to get away with it. The shit they do to the people here, their _own_ fucking people. My grandparents, they talked a lot about how much was forgotten, in the war. How many folks just disappeared, how many of the little things got lost. Family recipes and music and heirlooms. All the mundane shit that makes us human. Somebody has to be here, to witness it, to make sure no one forgets the little things. And might as well be me.” 

It’s not the answer Clay expected, and for a second he doesn’t have the words to reply. Before he can find them the door slams open and then rough hands are grabbing him, pulling him off the mattress. He tries to fight it, but he’s hungry and tired and weak, and all it earns him is a fist to the stomach. They’re pissed off today, he can tell. More then usual. 

“Hungry?” 

Scar face asks, pulling a bruised peach out of his pocket and taking a messy bite. Juice spills down his chin, drops onto the floor in front of him, and Clay’s stomach clenches around nothing, mouth watering. He swallows and keeps his eyes up, focusing somewhere past the man’s shoulder, and ignores the ache in his belly. He doesn’t respond. They bring the cattle prod out again, and that’s when Clay disappears for a while, back to the beach, to Brian. 

He’s lying in the sand, staring up at the sky. It’s blue and unclouded and a little faded at the edges, like a sepia photograph. The sun is warm against his face and he closes his eyes. 

“You know,” Brian says softly from beside him. “You can’t keep coming back here.” 

Clay cracks an eye open to look at him. He’s blurry and indistinct, wearing an expression of quiet concern as he watches Clay. 

“Why not?”

“You know why, Clay.”

Brian replies, and there’s a gentle admonishment to his tone. Clay sits up, looks out across the rolling waves of the ocean in front of them. It doesn’t look as eerie anymore, mostly just peaceful. He wonders what it might feel like to just sink beneath the waves, let the water close like curtains above his head. Brian follows his gaze, frowning a little like he can sense what Clay’s thinking. 

“It doesn’t feel like peace,” he says softly, “Just feels like drowning. Don’t get those two mixed up.” 


	4. chapter four

Clay opens his eyes with a sting that feels uncomfortably like rejection burning in his chest, cheek smarting from where somebody must have backhanded him awake. He blinks a few times, world spinning dizzily around him as he tries to find his feet. 

“-give us the name! Who told you where we would be?”

Someone’s shouting, and Clay glance blearily up to see Scar-face pacing angrily in front of him. His face is red with fury, pauses when he sees Clay looking at him, leaning close and grabbing him by the hair, yanking his head back so he has no choice but to meet his eyes. 

“You still think you will be saved? Is that why you don’t speak?”

Clay just keeps his mouth just, and doesn’t look away. From this close he can see the way the man’s scar stands out, pale and silvery against his flushed skin. He scoffs in disgust, dropping Clay’s head roughly as he takes a step back. There’s a glint in his eye before he speaks again, something Clay hasn’t seen before. 

“Your friends, the other _kafir_ in _al-Kasrah_. They’re dead.” He says slowly, deliberately. Clay’s heart stutters in his chest, body suddenly going numb as he continues. “I saw their bodies myself, I spit on them.”

“Shut the fuck up! Shut up!”

Clay yells, surging forward in his chair. It’s the first time he’s said anything beside his name rank and number, the first time he’s cracked since they took him and as soon as he does it he knows he’s made a mistake. The man grins cruelly, like a shark that’s smelled blood, a lion closing in for the kill. 

“No one comes to save you. You are alone. _Alone_.” 

He doesn’t remember much after that, just the bright sharp pain of his chest caving in on itself, the fury fighting against the heavy sinking weight of grief. At some point they give up, dragging him out of the chair and back to his cell. He doesn’t struggle against them; lets them carry him up the stairs. There’s no fight left in him now, nothing left to struggle with. 

They throw him in, and he just lies there too exhausted, too heartbroken to move. He feels sick, feels empty. He wants to not be here anymore, wants his team to be alive, wants to not hurt all the time. 

“You good in there man?”

Nowak asks after a few minutes. Clay doesn’t bother to respond, because what’s the point anymore? What does any of it matter? The only thing that was keeping him going just disappeared like so much smoke in the wind, trickling between his fingers like sand. 

“Hey, Jason? You with me?” 

And god Clay is really starting to regret using Jason’s name as an alias because hearing it out of Nowak’s mouth feels like an actual fucking knife to the stomach. Feels worse then all of the shit these assholes just did too him. He presses his eyes shut as they burn and hopes Nowak gets the hint.

“Come on,” Nowak urges, “just say something alright, so I know you’re not dead for real this time.”

There’s real earnest concern in his voice and Clay should find it touching but right now he just finds it irritating, like a fly that won’t stop buzzing in his ear.

“Leave me alone. It’s over.”

He mutters, not caring if it’s unkind. 

“What are you talking about, it’s over, what’s over?”

Nowak asks, very much not leaving him alone, and Clay sighs. 

“They’re dead.”

He says, bluntly, numbly. That manages to shut Nowak up for a few seconds, till he asks hesitantly. 

“Who, uh, who’s dead?”

“My- my team. I was here with a team. I thought maybe they made it out but…”

Clay intones blankly, that words sticking uncomfortably in his throat. He doesn’t want to talk about it, just wants Nowak to leave him alone and stop talking at him so he can curl up on the floor and fade away in peace. 

“Jesus…” Nowak breathes, and Clay thinks maybe he’s finally going to stay quiet, but then he continues. “I’m sorry. Really. But…I didn’t know them, but if they were anything like you they wouldn’t want you to give up like this, man.”

“You don’t know what the fuck they’d want.” Clay says, even though a part of him knows that it’s true. “Even if you did, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m just… I’m tired, man. I’m done.” 

Nowak’s voice sounds louder when he speaks again, like he’s right next to the wall now, urgent and insistent and unrelenting. 

“Hey. Hey, you don’t get to talk like that, okay. You’re Mr. Badass, you’re the one who told me not to give up when I felt like throwing in the towel. Makes you kinda a hypocrite, trying to check out as soon as the going gets a little tough, don’t you think?”

It’s a jibe, trying to get a rise out of Clay, but Clay ignores it. Sinks deeper into himself instead, away from the pain and the loss and the ache in his chest that’s worse then any hunger pangs or bruises. 

“Jesus Jase,” Nowak tries again, a tinge of desperation to his voice. “Who told you that shit about them being dead anyways, the guys who’ve been torturing you for the last week? And you just believed them? It’s not like they’ve got a good reason to fuck with us if they can. Come on, they show you any proof?”’

Clay pauses then, and for the first time since his world fell apart feels something other then icy despair. They didn’t show him any proof. They didn’t show him anything at all. And there’s a choice here, Clay realizes. He can choose to believe them, and give in. Or he can choose to believe in his team. He can choose to fight. And one of those things is easy and one is hard, and he knows exactly which one his friends would want him to pick. _Only easy day is yesterday,_ Jason’s voice echoes in the back of his mind. Something in him hardens at that, pieces that had fractured knitting slowly back together. He’d almost let these assholes get the better of him, almost let himself give in. He won’t make that mistake again. One thing is clear though, they're escalating, and eventually they're going to realize their efforts aren't getting them anywhere; Clay would like to not be around when that happens. 

“You’re right.” He says, pushing himself up to lean against the wall. “Listen, they’re getting worse, trying to break us down. Can’t sit around and just take it anymore. We gotta get out of here, tomorrow night.” 

There’s a long stunned pause before Nowak replies. 

“I mean don’t get me wrong I’m all for getting out of here, but how the hell are we going to do that? We’re journalists, not fucking Rambo, and I’m pretty sure these guys wouldn’t think twice about shooting us in the back while we’re running away.”

“Okay, I’ve been paying attention to their routine.” Clay explains, focused now that he has something to work towards, now that his chest doesn’t feel like it’s collapsing in with grief. “. They don’t come up into this hallway unless they’re coming to get one of us, and they usually only do that between morning and early afternoon. They want me-us-alive, for propaganda, and for ransoms. You’re going to yell, tell them I’m sick, I’m dying. When one of them comes into the room to check it out I’ll steal the keys off of him. They don’t seem to communicate through their radios often so it should take a few minutes for them to realize something’s wrong. Then we run, we go to ground till we can figure out how to let people know where we are. We’ll do it tomorrow night.” 

“I-I don’t know man, that’s-that’s pretty risky. I mean are you sure you can take down a whole ass dude by yourself-”

Nowak replies, a little slow, a little uncertain.

“Look,” Clay says impatiently, “I can handle it okay, don’t worry about me. All you need to do is get them up here alright, just tell ‘em I’m sick. Can you do that?”

There’s a long moment of silence before Nowak replies. 

“Yeah, yeah I can do that. I can do that. ”

Clay wakes up early, before the sun even starts to show through his window. It doesn’t seem like Nowak’s up yet, or if he is he isn’t in the mood for talking. That’s alright with Clay though. For a while he just lies there in the pre-dawn darkness, running through the plan over and over. Planning for the inevitability of something going wrong. He counts out the route to the exit, two lefts and down a flight of stairs, twenty steps from the stairway to the door. He can do this he thinks, just another op to execute. Just twenty steps from the stairway to the door. 

As the day passes the mood is tense and charged, like the ozone right before a thunderstorm breaks. Clay can nearly taste it in the stale air. His mind’s racing at a 100 miles per hour, heart pounding in his chest, but he forces himself to sit and be still, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth till he can feel his pulse settle. Searches for the crystal sharp clarity he sinks into when he’s watching a target through his scope. It does no good to be nervous, nervous makes you stupid, nervous means mistakes and they can’t afford any mistakes. 

“You sleep at all? I was so fucking anxious I could barely make myself lie down.”

Nowak asks, voice tight and skittish. Clay can hear him pacing through the wall, back and forth and back and forth across the length of his small room. It sounds like feet marching in time, like the beating of a heart. It echoes against the inside of Clay’s skull. 

“A few hours. No good tiring ourselves out now, we’ll need the energy later.”

He murmurs, closing his eyes. The last part is slightly pointed and Nowak sighs, but there’s a rustle of fabric as he sits. 

“Look, you should get some rest while you can. I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”

Clay offers. 

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

Nowak says shortly. He falls silent after that but Clay can tell from his breathing that he isn’t sleeping. Neither of talk for a while after that, each wrapped up in their own heads. Clay half dozes off for an hour or so, taking his own advice. 

“One time I watched this kid die.” Nowak says out of nowhere, shattering the silence and pulling Clay from his drowse. He blinks a little in confusion, tired brain trying to follow. “Couldn’t have been more then six, seven maybe. Just a kid, y’know. There were a lot of chemical attacks in Syria, for a while. Chlorine gas, mustard gas. Shit like that. And it’s really awful, what it does to you, burns you up from the inside, suffocates you. Takes a while for you to die. And in journalism, you know, you’re not supposed to intervene, not supposed to get involved. Supposed to just document what you see and let it play out. But he was just a kid, and he-I could tell he was in a lot pain, and that he was _scared_ -”

He pauses then, voice dying strangled in his throat, and Clay hears him take a deep shaky breath. He doesn’t interrupt thought, just waits till Nowak continues.   
  
“I-I couldn’t just stand there and take photos of him like he was a fucking zoo animal or some shit. So I said screw that and I went over and I held his hand and I tried to tell him it was going to be okay, which was bullshit obviously, and I don’t think he could even understand me but I just kept talking and talking and I held him until he died. And I just kept thinking, Christ, my sister has a daughter that age, what if this was her? What if Sophia and I have kids. And it’s like, how are you supposed to go home and be normal after that? Go to fucking dinner parties and-and debate politics and care about which celebrity is banging who and just… I don’t know how to do that, man.” 

“I know what you mean.”

Clay says, and he does. He really truly does. That’s the funny thing, how much Clay understands Nowak, how much Nowak understands him. Even though they live in different worlds, have different jobs, they do the things they do for the same reasons in the end. He thinks that maybe Nowak’s earned the truth, after all of it. Just in case things go wrong. 

“Hey, Nowak. I…there’s something I should tell you.” Clay says, a little awkwardly. There’s no good way to ease the guy into it so he goes for the ripping of the bandaid approach, just lets it spill out of him “My, uh, my names not Jason, and I’m not a journalist. I’m a SEAL, with the Navy. My team was running an op in Afghanistan when I got grabbed.”

Nowak doesn’t say anything for a long time and Clay almost gets nervous waiting for something, anything to break the silence. When he finally responds it’s not exactly how Clay expects: he laughs. Really laughs, whole hearted full belly laughter, loud enough that Clay’s almost concerned someone will hear. 

“Oh, god.” He manages when the wheezes subside a little, still a bit breathless, “Sorry, you probably think I’m crazy, but just…I thought I was being a complete pussy about all of this compared to you, but you’re a goddamn Navy SEAL. Of course you are. Jesus Christ.” 

Clay’s taken off guard, not quite sure what the correct response is here and he clears his throat, feeling vaguely embarrassed for some reason.   
  
“Sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, I just couldn’t be sure I could trust you at first you know.”

He mumbles.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I get it. It’s hard to trust anyone around here. Gotta say though, this makes me feel a lot better about our chances tonight. I was trying to imagine some weedy lit major in glasses trying to take out one of these assholes and it was making me real nervous.” Nowak replies, the last traces of laughter finally bleeding out of his voice. “Are you allowed to tell me your real name or is it some sort of top secret classified state secret?”

It’s Clay’s turn to let out a chuckle. 

“Nah, I’m allowed to tell you my name. Anyways I pretty sure this would qualify as exceptional circumstances. It’s Clay, Clay Spenser.” 

“Clay Spenser.” Nowak repeats, turning it over in his mouth. “Well Clay, there’s no one else I’d rather be escaping this hell hole with, and I mean that.”

“Yeah, same to you buddy.”

And Clay’s surprised to find he really means it too.


	5. chapter five

  
The day creeps by slowly, and with every minute that passes the bundle of nerves in Clay’s stomach grows tighter. 

“How do you do it man?”

Nowak asks suddenly, and Clay frowns in confusion. 

“Do what?”

“Just… not be afraid, I guess. This, all of this, it scares the shit out of me. Every day I wake up and I’m so fucking scared of everything. And then you come in and you’re just rock solid, acting like this is just another Tuesday afternoon or something.”

He says laughing, even though it’s not funny. Clay sighs, rubbing a hand roughly over his face, trying to scrub away the exhaustion that seems to eternally cling to his bones. 

“One of the first ops I ran with my team after I was drafted I got myself in a really bad situation.” He starts, “I was stuck down a hole in a bombed out building with a bum leg and a busted radio, and some bad guys decided to set up their artillery directly over my head. So there I am, no way to contact my team, no way to get out. And I’m sitting there, thinking I’m pretty much fucked right, can’t get worse then this. Then one of these dudes drops his ammo belt straight into the hole with me. And I’m in a pit man, there’s no place to hide. So I grab all my shit, stick myself in a corner in the back, pray to god he doesn’t see me cause if he does it’s literally shooting a fish in a barrel. My M16’s broken so all I have is my Glock and I just stand in that corner and wait. The guy gets so damn close to me I could nearly touch him, maybe five, six feet away. And I was terrified, man, like can’t move can’t blink can’t think terrified. ‘Cause if he sees me, he either tells his buddies or I shoot him and whichever way you slice it it’s over for me you know.” 

Nowak lets out a low whistle through his teeth, and Clay snorts. 

"Yeah, about sums it up. Somehow I managed to get through it without them noticing the white dude hanging out under their feet though, and then my team came back for me, got me out.” 

“That’s a good story and all Rambo, but how’s that supposed to make me feel any better?”

Nowak asks, a little dryly. 

“Because I was scared then, and I’m sure as hell scared now.” Clay says simply. “You’d have to be crazy not to be. But being scared isn’t productive. It’s okay to be afraid, just not to let it consume you. Acknowledge it, then put it aside is what my Green Team instructor always used to say. Move through it.” 

“How do you do that? Just move through it. ‘Cause I- I can’t just put it aside. Sometimes I get so scared it’s like I can’t breathe, and you’re sitting over there just planning escapes. Guess maybe I’m just a bit of a coward…”

Clay sighs, rubbing at his face. 

“Look, I’ve been trained for this. It’s my job, I’ve got an advantage. Of course I’m gonna handle it better. Ask me to write a newspaper article and I wouldn’t be great at it either, you know? For what it’s worth man, I don’t think you’re a coward. You’re holding up a lot better then some guys I know would.” 

“Really?”

Nowak asks, a little disbelievingly. 

“Yeah, really.” Clay says, laughing a little. “You’re one tough polish motherfucker. Think Sonny would like you.”

It slips out before he’s realized what he’s said, and then it feels like his throat’s closing up, lips clamping shut. 

“Who’s Sonny?”

Nowak asks innocently. Clay takes a deep breath, trying to get himself back under control, willing his voice not to crack when he speaks again. 

“Sonny’s, uh, he’s one of my teammates. Kind of an idiot, and likes Texas and booze way too much, but he’s…he’s my best friend.”

“Hey, sounds like we’d probably get along, maybe we’ll get a drink together once we get out, huh. I’d say first rounds one me if we survive this.” 

Nowak says, laughing a little, and he sounds genuine. Clay can’t help but smile. 

“Alright,” He replies. “Long as you’re paying I’m in.” 

“What about the rest of them? Seems like you’re all pretty close.”

Clay hesitates for a moment, not entirely sure if this is a good idea, but in the end he decides fuck it. He’s already come this far, might as well go the whole way. 

“Yeah, guess we are, kinda have to be y’know. There’s Ray, pretty sure he’s the only reason I ever got drafted to Bravo-my team. Then there’s Trent, our medic, saved my life a time or two, good solid guy. Kind of freaky about weapons, but nobody else I’d rather have watching my back. Brock and Cerb, our bomb dog. Brock’s quiet, but if you’re not careful he’ll hustle you out of your life savings. And Jason, he’s our team leader. He’s, uh, he’s really looked out for me the past couple years.”

Talking about his team to Nowak feels odd. Almost tender, but tender like a bruise. Tender in a way that hurts a little. 

“They sound like a good bunch.” 

Nowak says, voice soft and horribly kind, and Clay swallows against the lump in his throat. 

“They are. Best thing that’s ever happened to me, I think.”

He mumbles, a little hoarsely. And he doesn’t know why he’s telling him all this, why he’s baring the truth of it to a virtual stranger. Maybe because they’re not strangers anymore, not really. Maybe it’s just because it’s the truth. 

Before Nowak gets the chance to respond though there’s the sounds of activity in the hallway, footsteps tramping up the hallway. Clay frowns, it’s more then usual at least three or four guys instead of one or two. It’s never been that many before. 

“ _Take them both_ ,”

One of them says, and Clay feels his stomach drop. His cell door slams open and two men enter, shoving him roughly to the ground and cuffing his wrists behind his back, pulling a bag over his head. In the next room he can hear Nowak getting the same treatment. He lets them yank him to his feet, frog-march him out the door, doesn’t fight back. Right now the odds aren’t in their favor. They’re just going to have to ride out whatever the hell they’re planning to do and hope it isn’t too bad. Still, Clay feels a bad feeling start to settle, like over-sweet sugar clinging to your teeth. 

They march them down the stairs, but instead of taking them to the classroom they turn out the doorway Clay had marked in his mental map earlier. It leads outside like Clay had predicted, into the hot midday heat, and he can feel a faint breeze whisper along the exposed skin of his neck, smell dust and dirt through the bag on his head. That’s when the bad feeling coalesces into something more then just a feeling, and Clay feels real actual fear claw at his throat. 

“Move,”

Someone behind him barks, emphasizing the point with a jab to the small of Clay’s back with his gun. Clay stumbles forward, wincing, and obeys. They make them walk for about half an hour or so, the terrain changing from mostly paved street to hilly sand dunes. Clay’s lost weight and muscle mass in the week and half or so that he’s been here, and by the end he’s panting a little bit, abused body protesting at the sudden enforced exercise. 

When they finally stop they shove Clay down onto the ground, pulling the bag off his head. He blinks, squinting as his eyes adjust to the intense brightness of full sun. Beside him Nowak falls on his ass, looking a little dazed. It’s odd, to see the man he’s been talking to through a wall for so long face to face. Clay remembers seeing a few photos of him floating around the internet and newspapers right after he got grabbed, a long horsey face, sharp nose and cheekbones, the whole Slavic white-blonde hair blue eyed thing going. He looks different now though, up close after a few months captivity. He’s skinnier; boney face closer to skeletal, ragged cargo pants and light quikdry polyester shirt hanging off his frame. There’s something blank and haunted to those pale blue eyes now too, something Clay’s seen before in friends, in teammates. The sort of weary bone-deep exhaustion that doesn’t go away with sleep. The sort of exhaustion that weighs something. 

He blinks too, staring at Clay with the sort of unnerving intensity of a man desperately clinging to the end of a rope. But to be fair, he probably hasn’t seen a friendly face in a long time, so Clay can’t really hold it against him. In front of them the men who brought them out here are starting to set up camera equipment. Clay has a terrible feeling he knows what comes next. Nowak follows his gaze, swallowing. 

“They’re going to kill us, aren’t they.”

He asks quietly in a way that isn’t really a question, almost resigned. Yes, Clay thinks. _Yes they are_. He doesn’t say that though. 

“We don’t know for sure,” He lies instead, “Could be filming ransom demands, or propaganda. They just do it out here so they don’t give away identifying landmarks, in the videos.”

“Come on, I may not be a SEAL but I’m not an idiot. I’m a war correspondent; I know what they do to Western prisoners. I’ve covered this shit before.” 

Nowak shoots back, not sharply, but firmy. Clay doesn’t say anything. They both know what’s happening, what’s going to happen. No use to pretend it isn’t. 

“Christ,” Nowak continues, leaning back against the dune behind him, tilting his face up to the sun and closing his eyes. “Feels good to see the sky again.”

Clay follows his lead, leans back and looks upward. The sky is bright clear blue, so blue it hurts a little too look at. The sun is warm against his skin, and if he closed his eyes he thinks he could almost pretend he’s somewhere else. One more night, Clay thinks. One more night and they would have made it. A few more hours, and they’d be out of here, not safe maybe, but closer to it. 

“Hey, Sean.” He says, not looking at the other man, keeping his eyes on the sun. He doesn’t squint, even when it burns. “I’m sorry.” 

Nowak scoffs. 

“For what?”  
  
“For not getting us out in time. I’m sorry you’re not going to get home to your wife.”

Nowak doesn’t respond for a long time, and Clay finally blinks, sun leaving dark spots dancing in front of his vision. When he looks at Nowak, he’s looking right back at him, face somber yet terribly soft. 

“Don’t apologize man, it’s not your fault. We both knew the risks, doing what we’re doing, guess the cards just weren’t in our favor this time around.”

“Yeah, guess not.” Clay says, letting out a huff of laughter. “Is it kind of fucked up that I don’t regret any of it?”

And he asks because he doesn’t. He asks because he’s about to die in a probably painful and bloody way for a million people to see and he’s afraid, but he wouldn’t change anything that led him here. 

“No,” Nowak replies, with a hint of a smile on his cracked and dry lips. “I don’t either.” 

Clay smiles back. The moment is interrupted by two men approaching, pulling him up and away from Nowak. The drag him over in front of the camera, force him to his knees. He doesn’t struggle, doesn’t resist. Doesn’t give them the pleasure of seeing his fear. They shove a paper in front of his face, waving it emphatically. 

“Read this.”

One of them says, tapping at the paper insistently. Clay stares back at him, and shakes his head. 

“Read this,”

He says again more insistent, agitated. Clay shakes his head again. 

“No.”

Somebody behind him drives the butt of a rifle into the back of his head, sending him tumbling forward to the ground. He can’t break his fall with his hands and goes face first into the dirt, shoulder hitting the ground awkwardly. There’s sand in his mouth and his eyes, and he coughs blindly as someone grabs the back of his collar and hauls him up onto his knees again. Again the paper is shoved in his face. 

“Read!” 

Someone shouts angrily, but Clay just keeps on shaking his head. They can take everything from him, but they can’t take this last little bit of control. Fuck them if they think he’s going to spout their propaganda before he dies. 

The angry man goes to hit him again, but another one grabs his arm, holding him. 

“ _Leave it. He will not read. Our words will be enough_.”

He scoffs, but nods, shaking the hand off as he gestures to the man behind the tripod, who press a button as the light on the front of the camera flashes red. 

“For every death of our soldiers, America will pay in blood.”

The man intones, holding up the paper. Reaching down he rips the Bravo patch off of Clay’s shoulder, holding it up to the camera like the bloody dripping head of an animal, like a prize. He continues on, droning about righteous fury and god’s will. Clay tunes him out; because he doesn’t want to hear whatever garbage he’s spewing. 

He thinks a little about Stella, wonders if she’ll hear the news about a SEAL being executed, turn the TV on and see his face. He wonders if she’ll cry, or if she’ll be grateful she ended things when she did. Mostly, though, he thinks about his team. Thinks about how they’re alive out there somewhere, looking for him. Thinks about how they’re probably going to watch this video. He hopes they don’t blame themselves, hope they remember him as more then this. Mostly, he misses them. Mostly he wishes he had the chance to say goodbye. 

“For the attacks in _Al-Kasrah_ and _Karbala_ we now take the life of this man, justice for our fallen brothers.”

The man reading the statement steps back then, and another one takes his place, holding a long machete. Clay takes a deep breath, and doesn’t close his eyes, stares straight ahead of him. This is it, he realizes. This is the end of it. Violence begets violence, blood begets blood. He has killed and now he will be killed and it makes sense, in a dull resigned sort of way. He thinks back to what Stella had said to him a couple days before they broke up, voice strained with frustration and eyes glimmering with tears. _Alana’s death was a tragic accident, Adam’s was an inevitability_. And she didn’t say it then, but he’d heard it anyways: yours is too. And Clay had been angry with her because of it for a long time but he thinks he understands now why she did what she did. It’s hard to live with a ghost hanging over your shoulder, it’s hard to mourn someone you haven’t lost yet. So he understands, and he thinks maybe he forgives her for it too. 

Next to him the man finishes his speech, and someone hands him a long blade. He hefts it experimentally in his hand, like he’s testing the weight, and Clay takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. If he’s going to die then he’s going to die with dignity, he’s going to die with honor. 

There’s a whistle as the blade starts to descend, slicing through the air towards Clay’s neck. Clay’s never wondered what he might think about in the moments before his death, always figured he probably wouldn’t see it coming, but here he is on his knees in the sand and all he can think about is Bravo. All he can think about is how he wanted more time, how much he doesn’t want to die. It burns bright and sharp and fierce inside of him how unfair it is, but the world has never been a fair place, Clay’s learned that lesson well. 

The blade descends, and Clay doesn’t close his eyes.


	6. chapter six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a little late, the chapter got pretty bulky and it was a tough one to write...

Clay waits, but the pain never comes. After a second his brain catches up with the rest of his body and he realizes it’s because the man stopped the machete inches away from his neck. He blinks, numbly confused, so convinced he was a dead man and not quite sure what to do now that he’s not. The man pulls the blade away, gesturing for the camera operator to kill the recording. 

Realization settles with a sort of terrible numbness in Clay’s stomach as they pull him to his feet, and start to drag him away. Of course they’re not going to kill him, not when he still has valuable intel in his head they want to extract. But Nowak? Nowak’s just a journalist. A piece of propaganda waiting to happen. It makes sense in the worst way. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Nowak being lifted to his feet and his blood turns to ice in his veins.

“No, leave him alone goddammit.”

He yells, struggling futilely against the hands on his arms. Nowak meets his eyes as they pass each other, face eerily calm and still.

“If you get out, tell Sophia I’m sorry. Tell her I love her.”   
  
He calls out, as they drag Clay away, feet scrabbling across sand and dirt. They pull the bag down over his head then, blinding him, but he can still hear. Can still hear the sound of Nowak refusing to read whatever message of regret they’d come up with for him, can hear the same stupid pointless speech they’d made about retribution. There’s a blind frantic panic rising in his guts and he fights like an animal against his captors to no avail. 

“Leave him the fuck alone you pieces of shit!”

He screams again, voice tearing at his throat, and is rewarded with a heavy backhand that sends him reeling, ears ringing dully. A second later there’s the sound of a blade meeting flesh, then the dull thud of something heavy falling to the ground. 

Clay feels something in him fracture then, something that up until now had been whole. He doesn’t remember much after that. One moment he’s in the desert and then he blinks and he’s back in his cell, sprawled on his back. 

He screams and he shouts and he beats his fists bloody against the walls of his cell. None of it changes anything. None of it changes the fact that Nowak is dead and he’s still alive. Eventually he collapses back on his mattress, too exhausted to keep going any more. He feels the broken pieces inside of him grate in his chest, and it’s like he can’t breath through the pain of it suddenly. Like it’s something alive and vicious in his chest. 

He drifts, for a while, and when he comes back to himself he’s ankle deep in the surf, sand shifting and sinking around his toes.

“I’m sorry about Nowak.” Brian offers softly, coming to stand by Clay. “He was a good guy.” 

“Yeah.” Clay says, looking out across the waves, as chilly water streams across the tops of his feet. “Yeah he was.”

And he was. He was a good man, and a kind man, and a man who did the things he did for the right reasons. And in the end, none of that mattered. In the end, he still died just like anyone else. Being good didn’t save him, just made his death even more of a waste. 

The next couple of days they leave him entirely alone, and that’s somehow even worse then the torture. They’ve gone back to feeding him, probably worried about losing such a valuable asset, so once a day he gets his brief delivery of soup and bread. Besides that though, Clay is completely alone. 

It starts to wear on him, the emptiness, and the quiet. The boring blank grey of the room, how the only way to pass time is the shadow of the window arcing slowly across the floor as the sun moves through the sky. He spends a lot of time on the mattress, just staring up at the ceiling. He memorizes every crack and dent and hole in the concrete, mapping the lines and craters like constellations in the night sky. It reminds him of his grandmother, of lying on their porch in Liberia as she pointed out Cygnus and Andromeda and Orion, the arrangement of the Southern Cross drifting by the horizon. The memory makes him feel a little like his rib cage is caving in, so he stops looking at the ceiling. 

He thinks, maybe, the silence is the worst part. The way it gets so loud sometimes it drowns out even the thoughts in his own head. Some days he wants to bang on the walls, wants to scream until somebody comes in, just to break up the monotony. He doesn’t though, just lies on his mattress and stares at the wall and watches the shadow on his floor move slowly across the room. Even though they’re bringing him food again he finds it hard to eat, everything tastes like ash in his mouth. When he dreams he hears the thump of something heavy and round hitting the ground, over and over and over and over again, so he tries not to sleep anymore. 

The days drag slowly on, and he stops bothering to keep count. He gets it now, why Nowak had sounded so relieved back on that first night. It’s a terrible thing to be alone. 

In his worst moments he thinks about his team. Thinks about Sonny’s stupid Star Wars jokes and watching old WWE tapes together till Clay’s pretty sure his brain was going to melt out his ears. The way Brock always scalps them with a smile whenever they play cards, all the weird places they’ve found him curled up asleep with Cerb. Trent’s steady comforting touch; how he’d put his hands on a bear, no fear at all. Thinks about how Ray always has time to give advice, thinks about Jason and the way he fights and fights and fights for his team, every day. He misses them, deeply and fiercely and unrelentingly. Misses them more then he knew it was possible to miss them. He feels like there’s a hole in his chest, like someone came in with a spoon and scooped out his heart. 

He goes to the beach a lot. It’s easier there, easier then his sad grey cell with it’s cratered ceiling and the emptiness next door. Easier to sit in the sand and the sun and the smell of sea, easier not to think about the reality that waits on the other side.

“You’re gonna kill yourself if you keep up like this.” Brian says one day, voice sharp with reprimand. “I don’t think Nowak would want that.”

“Don’t say that.” Clay snaps, “Don’t fucking say that. It doesn’t matter what he wants anymore. You know why?”

Brian doesn’t reply, just looks at him with sad eyes, and Clay barrels on. 

“Because those assholes separated his head from his fucking shoulders and probably left his body to just-just rot in the desert like trash, that’s why. He’s dead. So fuck his opinion, and fuck you for using him like that. ”

“You don’t mean that.” Brian says quiet and even and steady, when Clay’s finished. “I know you don’t.” 

Clay deflates, sinking back to the sand. He takes a deep breath of salty air, the breeze tugging gently at his hair. He feels a second away from coming unhinged, like if he isn’t careful he might just crumble in on himself in way that you don’t come back. Feels a second away from screaming and screaming and never stopping. Feels like a bruise or a fractured bone, like something broken and fragile and vicious. Clay’s strong, he knows that, he’s been tested enough to see the iron core of himself laid bare and known he could weather any storm but this feels different. Feels like an unmaking of sorts. He’s not sure who he’s going to be on the other side of it, not sure he wants too. 

“Everyone keeps telling me what other people would want. But what about what I want?”

He asks finally. Brian looks at him, and his eyes are limpid and clear in the constant noonday sun and suddenly Clay misses him so much it hurts a little. 

“Sometimes what we want and what we need aren’t always the same thing.”

And Clay knows that’s true, but a part of him wishes it wasn’t. 

After enough days undisturbed that Clay’s pretty convinced that they’re just going to leave him to rot in his tiny cell, they finally come for him again. He considers putting up a fight, but finds he just doesn’t have the energy anymore. 

The rough him up for a bit, but Clay barely feels it. With every punch that Clay absorbs without a flinch they just get angrier and angrier, blows coming harder. Eventually Camo pants hits him hard enough to knock the chair over onto its side, impact ringing in Clay’s ears. From his new vantage point he can see where someone’s carved a rudimentary flower into the surface of one of the toppled desks. It was obviously drawn by a child, just five rounded lumpy petals surrounding a circle. Clay wonders if the kid who drew is it still alive out there somewhere. He hopes they are. The world deserves people who take the time to carve flowers into desks, to make ordinary things beautiful. 

Above him his interrogators argue loudly in rapid-fire Arabic, unaware that Clay can understand every word. 

“ _We should just kill him and be done with it._ ” one says, “ _The infidel will not tell us what we want to know, we waste our time trying to make him._ ” 

“ _No,_ ” the other snaps back. “ _We will try something different. Everyone has a breaking point, we just have to find his._ ”

They haul him to his feet, cutting his hands loose only to secure them again in front of him. One of the men leaves for a second and when he comes back he’s holding a long piece of rope. Looping one end through the cuffs on Clay’s wrists he throws the other up, tossing it over a pipe that traverses the ceiling. Clay sees where this is going a second before he pulls down hard on the rope, yanking Clay’s arms brutally above his head, shoulders creaking from the strain. They lift him up till his toes are just barely brushing against the ground, and then they leave him there, hanging like a piñata. 

The cuffs dig into his wrists, chafing at skin and rubbing uncomfortably against bone and the muscles along his ribs and shoulders stretch and pull uncomfortably. It’s hard to take a deep breath, lungs refusing to expand in his chest and after a few minutes he feels black spots start to dance at the edge of his vision, flickering in and out. Reaching up he twines his fingers around the rope they left him dangling on, pulls himself up for a second, taking a few deep gasping breaths into oxygen starved lungs before he lowers himself down again. Again and again the cycle repeats, hanging there slowly suffocating until once more he hauls himself up like a drowning man searching for air, each time his arms trembling a little more with the strain. 

Eventually his body’s just too exhausted to keep pulling himself up though and he just hangs, limp and relenting like a fish caught on a hook that’s been left out of water too long to struggle, breath coming short and gasping in his throat. Everything hurts, his arms and shoulders and lungs. His wrists where the cuffs have cut deep enough into skin too draw blood. Time passes he thinks, lost in a haze as he hovers somewhere halfway in between reality and unconsciousness.

He’s never hurt for this long before, and there are moments where Clay can’t remember what it felt like without it. Sometimes it feels like the pain is never going to leave, like it’s wormed it’s way into the deepest parts of him, sunk it’s ugly teeth into his bones like a cancer. Sometimes he feels like he won’t know who he is anymore without the pain. Maybe they’ve left him here to die, he thinks. Maybe they got tired of asking him questions he won’t answer. 

Clay knows it’s getting bad the first time he hallucinates Nowak leaning against one of the tables across from him. He looks better then the last time Clay saw him, gaunt and washed out underneath the desert sun. Looks healthier, cheeks filled out and eyes bright.

“You’re dead.” 

Clay rasps bluntly, voice scratching like sandpaper in his dry throat, too exhausted to be surprised. Nowak just grins back at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“Yeah, well, happy to see you too.” 

“You’re looking pretty good for a dead guy.”

Clay manages, wincing at the effort of getting the words out and Nowak eyes him a little, brows creasing as his lips tug downwards. 

“And you’re looking like shit, man.”

Usually Clay would reply with a snarky quip, but he doesn’t have it in him right now. Anyways, Nowak’s probably right. 

“I’m sorry.”

He says, instead, and means it. Sorry he’s still here and Nowak isn’t. Sorry he lied for so long. Sorry for a lot. Nowak frowns, shaking his head and pushing off the table to take a step towards Clay. 

“Hey man, what’d I tell you? Don’t apologize, nothing you could’ve done. There’s enough bad shit in the world, don’t need to take responsibility for the crap that isn’t yours.”

And Clay wants to believe him, he does, but he’s just not sure how. 

Stella’s the next to visit.

“I’m sorry.” She breathes; pressing a kiss he doesn’t feel to his temple.

“It’s alright.” 

He replies, but that just seems to make her sadder, her eyes bright with tears. He wonders if this is what she felt like when he was home, a ghost haunting her life that hadn’t died yet. When she leaves he can almost smell her perfume in the air, lilac and magnolia. 

For a while he drifts in and out of consciousness, only half-aware of the world around him. He almost wishes his dying neurons produce his team out of thin air, he knows they’re not real but it would just be nice to see their faces last time. would   
Nobody comes, real or otherwise. Every breath is harder and harder to take, lungs struggling to expand as the weight of his own body slowly crushes them. Clay almost wishes they had killed him back in the desert; anything seems better then this slow painful descent into the abyss. 

This time when he goes to the beach he’s standing knee deep in the surf, water lapping at his knees. Even here he can’t quite escape the pain, but it’s further away now, buried under layers of cotton.

“Watch out, it gets deep quick.”

Brian calls from behind him. Clay turns, feeling the waves beckon him inexorably outwards.

“I don’t think I can do it anymore, Brian.”

He says, like he’s confessing a secret, something ugly and small and dangerous. And perhaps he is, that he’s not as strong as he thought he was, that he doesn’t have it in him to wait anymore. 

Brian frowns, brow furrowing, and takes a step towards Clay. 

“What are you talking about? What can’t you do anymore?”

He asks, a little warily. Like he already knows where this is going. He probably does too; Brian always seemed to know where Clay’s head was at even when he didn’t know himself. 

“This. All of this. I’m just…I can’t do it anymore. I don’t think I have it in me.” 

Clay repeats. Brian takes another step towards him, cautious, like he’s approaching a wild animal. 

“You can’t just give up, man. Your team’s coming for you, you know that. You just gotta hold on until they get here.”

He pleads, and Clay turns back to the ocean, endless and blue and deep. Feels the drag of the tide at his legs. It would be so easy to give into that pull, to just let go, and Clay’s very tired now. 

“You were the one who told me not to fight what you can’t beat. It’s a waste of energy. You just…just give up and say goodbye.”

He whispers, not looking at Brian. Afraid of what he’s going to see if he does. 

“Yeah, I did. But this isn't what I was talking about. You can beat this, you will.”

Brian says, sounding almost angry now, voice sharp and biting and insistent.

“I don’t know if I can, Brian.”

He hates himself for saying it, but it’s true. He keeps his eyes locked on the horizon, not wanting to see the disappointment on Brian’s face, so it takes him by surprise when a sharp shove sends him stumbling to the side. 

“Fuck you.”

Brian says icily, his usually warm eyes cool and hard. Clay just gapes at him, not expecting this reaction and not quite sure what to do with it. Of all the responses he expected to get this wasn’t one of them. Brian just barrels on, not noticing or not caring that Clay didn’t reply. 

“I’m dead, Clay, you get that right?” Brian spits, punctuating his words with another shove. “I’m fucking dead. I’m never gonna get the chance to make it through Green Team, or-or lead my own team. I never get to be shit-faced with my friends again and stay out way too late. I’m never gonna get the chance to fall in love or get married or have kids. I don’t get to do _anything_ ever again, and you’re standing here telling me you’re just gonna give it all up?” 

By the time he finishes he’s practically yelling, advancing step by step on Clay and pushing him back towards the beach each time. Clay doesn’t fight still too stunned to try and defend himself. On the last shove he trips on some thing, falling backwards onto his ass into the sand with a dull thud. Brian stands over him, the sun filtering down dye the strands of his hair golden. Clay watches as the anger runs right out of him, like water from a broken cup. Suddenly Brian doesn’t look mad anymore, just a little heartbroken. 

“I would give anything to still be alive, anything. Just for the chance at one more day. Life is a gift Clay, took me dying to realize exactly how much, and if you can’t fight for it for yourself, do it for me. Cause I never got the chance.”

Clay swallows hard, feeling guilt and grief rise in his throat like bile, nearly choking him with it. 

“I’m sorry. I-I didn’t think about it like that.” 

Brian sighs, shaking his head and sitting down beside him. 

“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have gotten angry like that. It’s just… you can’t give up Clay. Not like this. Can you promise me that?”

Clay looks out across the ocean, to the distant horizon where the sky disappears into the sea. He’s not sure if he can keep that promise, but he’ll try. He’ll try until he can’t anymore, and he thinks that maybe’s what matters in the end. 

“Yeah,” he says finally. “Yeah I promise.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally never had a harder time writing a chapter... I really considered changing what happened to Nowak because I ended up liking him so much but it needed to happen for the story to move forward.


	7. chapter seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is so late! I just didn't have any time over thanksgiving break to write which put me back a little. As always hope everyone's staying safe and enjoy!

Clay jerks awake to a bucket of cold water being thrown in his face. He sputters a little, blinking the liquid out of his eyes as he tries to get his bearings. Then somebody’s hands are on him, slapping harshly at his face as they call out indistinct words over their shoulder. The touch sends him spinning a little, wrists screaming in protest as his body twists in the air and he sucks in a short strangled breath through his teeth, feeling his vision blur again. 

“No dying yet for you.”

Camo pants says from where he’s standing a few feet away, grinning cruelly at Clay as Scar-face shoves something under his feet and the pressure on his lungs eases a little as he puts the weight of his body on his feet instead of his wrists. Clay ignores him, to concentrated on breathing in deep unfettered gasps for the first time in hours to care about anything else. 

The two men step back, talking quietly in rapid-fire Arabic too quiet for Clay to hear. He just stands there on the chunk of cinderblock and focuses on inhaling and exhaling. His vision is still slightly blurred around the edges, brain still a little oxygen starved, but he’s not so out of it he doesn’t see his gun tucked into the front of Scar-face’s pants. Not so out of it that he doesn’t realize it’s just him and two men and a gun, with no locked doors to speak of. And he’s weak and he’s hurt and he’s so very very tired, but he also knows this is also probably his best chance. One that isn’t going to come again.   
  
He lets himself hang limply, lets his eyes flutter almost all the way shut, so he can still just barely see the faint shapes of the two men across the room through the soft haze of his eyelashes. It takes a few seconds for them to notice something’s wrong, Camo pants nudging Scar-face and gesturing towards Clay. Scar-face shakes his head in irritation, calling out sharply in Arabic first then in English. . 

“ _Astayqiz_ , wake up _kafir_.”

Clay doesn’t respond though, just keeps his eyes down, evening his breath out till his chest barely rises and falls with it. The man approaches then, so close now to Clay he can feel his breath on his skin, frown creasing his face and pulling at the line of his silvery scar. He reaches out a slaps roughly at Clay’s cheek, but Clay doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch when the blows become sharper. Still he waits, waits for Scar-faces frown to deepen and for him to turn and gesture Camo pants over to him. 

“ _Brother,_ _I think he might be dead._ ” 

He says, giving up on slapping Clay back into consciousness for the moment. Camo pants curses, approaching the two of them and leaning in to put a finger to Clay’s pulse. That’s the moment that Clay finally springs in to action. Wrapping his fingers around the rope above his cuffs he pulls himself sharply upwards, tapping into the last untouched reserves he still has, pulling from somewhere deep inside him as he brings both of his feet forward into Camo pants chest and kicks him hard. He can feel something crack under his boots as a rib splinters. The man lets out a breathy huff, stumbling back and falling to the floor as he wheezes in surprise and pain. 

Scar-face shouts, pulling Clay’s gun out of his waistband, fumbling for the safety as he points it at Clay. Before he can pull the trigger though Clay swings wildly with his left foot, clipping the man’s wrist and sending the gun skittering across the floor as he cries out, clutching at his hand. Before he can recover Clay lifts his legs up again, wrapping them around the man’s neck and locking his ankles behind his neck before he starts to squeeze. Tighter and tighter he presses his legs together as Scar-face scrabbles desperately to pull them off of himself, fingers digging into Clay’s legs white-knuckled as he struggles for breath. There’s a grim satisfaction to seeing his face turn red, Clay thinks, and presses even tighter. 

After maybe twenty or thirty seconds the man finally goes limp, eyes rolling back into his head as his hands fall slack at his side and he crumples to the ground. Clay can’t entangle his legs fast enough, and for a second there’s a terrible pressure as the man’s entire dead weight pulls unforgivingly at his wrists, but then the pipe they’d hung him on buckles and gives and Clay comes tumbling down on top of him in a mess of limbs, air knocked sharply out of his lungs. He barely has the time to gather himself though because Camo pants has had the time to collect himself now, stumbling to his knees with one hand pressed to his ribs and a look of murderous intent on his face. In unison both of their heads swivel to where Clay’s gun is lying on the ground, just a few short feet away.

There’s a second of empty air, like the calm before a storm, and then they’re both scrabbling across the floor for it in a desperate deadly race. Clay’s a little closer, but the other man’s not half-starved and handcuffed and he quickly starts to make up the distance. Clay’s just reaching out for the grip of the gun when a hand closes around his ankle, yanking him roughly backwards. He goes down hard again, chin slamming against the concrete when he can’t get his hands in front of him fast enough and sending reverberations through his jaw, feeling teeth cut through tender flesh as he bites down on the inside of his cheek. 

Camo pants take Clay’s moment of distraction to lunge forward, but his fingers just barely scrape gainst the handle of the glock, and he only sends it spinning further away. A deep growl, low and guttural and unbidden tears itself from Clay’s lip and he pulls himself off of the ground, throwing himself forward aggressively. His hands are still cuffed but he uses that to his advantage now, looping his arms around his opponent’s head and pulling the cuff’s links across his throat. The man gurgles, bucking wildly underneath Clay, hands reaching back behind him to scrabble at Clay’s arms, his face. Clay just leans back further, pulling the chain tighter even as the metal cuffs bite into his skin. 

They struggle for a few more seconds, and Clay can feel himself fading fast. He just doesn’t have the muscle-mass or stamina to keep up with this level of physical exertion anymore. The other man must notice too because he suddenly bucks upwards, rolling Clay over onto his back and slamming an elbow into his cheekbone. It loosens Clay’s grip enough that Camo pants can wriggle his way out of the chokehold. He pulls back a little, panting, and staggers to his feet, eyes locked on Clay with murderous intent. When he threw Clay off of him though he pushed him closer to the gun, and as he lunges forward Clay reaches his hands up, scrabbling blindly above his head. 

He feels his fingers brush cool metal, and then his hand closes around the grip. Barely bothering to sight Clay brings the glock up in front of him, and pulls the trigger. Camo pants goes down in a spray of blood and grey matter, a neat bullet hole in the middle of his forehead as he collapses forward across Clay’s legs. Clay’s hands fall, and he collapses back against the floor, panting raggedly as a surge of adrenaline washes through him and leaves his hands trembling. 

For a second he just lets himself lie there, feeling blood slowly soak into the knees of his pants and tasting the bitter metallic of it in his mouth from when he’d bitten through his cheek. But a second is all he can afford and then he’s forcing himself to roll the corpse off of him and stumbling to his feet, spitting a mouthful of blood out onto the floor as he goes. He pats down the body till he finds Camo’s radio, shoving it into his pocket. He doesn’t bother trying to hunt down the keys to cuffs on his wrists, it’s a waste of time he doesn’t have. 

Somebody’s probably heard the gunshot, but just in case they haven’t he pulls Scar-face’s radio off his belt and crushes it under his foot before heading out of the classroom. It’s the first time he’s been through this corridor without a blindfold, but the steps have become nearly muscle memory at this point and he navigates it easily. It doesn’t take him long to reach the door that leads to the street. Sunlight streams through the cracks, like the promise of freedom, and Clay stutters to a halt. For a second he looks longingly at that light, then he turns away from the door and heads deeper into the building. 

Realistically, he’s doomed if he just makes a run for it. He has no idea where he is, and there’s probably nothing but desert and scrubland for miles around. If he runs he’ll likely either be quickly caught, or die of exposure before he can be rescued. As much as he hates it, as much as it sits viscerally wrong in his stomach like a bad burrito, Clay knows his best bet is to hope to god he can let someone know where he is, and wait for them to come to him. Wait for his team to come to him. That is, of course, if his captors don’t kill him for this before they reach him. 

He shakes the thought from his head, focuses on where his feet are leading him down a dimly lit hallway. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s been down this way for a while judging from the untouched dust on the floor, and eventually he stops, wedging himself in a corner and pulling the radio out of his pocket. If these work anything like the ones he’s used to there should be a GMRS frequency, that will hopefully broadcast outside the network to any nearby channels or stations. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one he has. He doesn’t know where he is, but most radios are equipped with a GPS ping that tags your location. Switching from the private internal channel Clay takes a deep breath. 

“If anyone get’s this message, my name is Special Warfare Operator First Class Clay Spenser with the U.S. Navy. I was taken captive in Iraq approximately two weeks ago, but think I’m in Syria now. I should be transmitting my exact location via GPS coordinates along with this transmission. I think, uh, I think I’m being held in an old school, not sure how many fighting age males are on target. I managed to escape, but they’re looking for me now. Not sure how much time I have left. If you receive this message, I could really use a little back-up-”

Before he can finish there’s the sound of voices from down the hallway and Clay freezes, breath catching in his throat. Finishing the transmission he sends a quick prayer up to whoever might be listening that it gets through to someone, before carefully pocketing the radio again, adjusting his grip on his gun and praying that whoevers at the other end of the hallway just keeps moving. His luck ran out a long time ago though, and after a few seconds of indistinct conversation one set of footsteps starts to make their way towards Clay. There’s no way they’re not going to see him as soon as they round the corner, he might as well take the tactical advantage of surprise. 

Taking one last deep breath, he swings around the corner with his gun leveled and is confronted with the wide uncertain eyes of the kid who’s come to grab him from his cell a few times before. For a second they both just stare at each other, neither of them making a sound. This close up Clay can see how young he is, barely 17 or 18 if he had to guess. He’s holding the AK-47 in his hands awkwardly, like he’s not quite sure what to do with it, and Clay can see beads of sweat gleaming along his hairline as his pulse thrums visibly in his throat. He doesn’t look like a soldier or a zealot, he looks like a scared college kid who’s wildly out of his depth. 

“ _Drop the gun or I’ll shoot!_ ”

He barks in Arabic, obviously trying to sound authoritative but coming off more as terrified. Clay doesn’t move, and the kid takes another shaky step forward, gesturing wildly with the barrel of his weapon. 

“ _Drop it,_ ” 

He shouts again, louder this time, an edge of panic roughening the corners of the words. And Clay knows that right now he has control of this situation, that he could drop this kid in a second before he even had time to react. He thinks the kid knows it too. If he did though, the rest of the complex would know exactly where he was and he knows he wouldn’t be able to elude them for much longer. He’s going to be caught, one way or another, the question is does he want to bring down the boy with him or not. In the end, it’s not a difficult decision. 

Slowly and deliberately, careful to make no sudden movements, Clay takes his finger off the trigger of his gun, making sure the kid can see him do it and holding up his hands in surrender. 

“ _I’m going to put this down now, okay?_ ” 

He responds evenly, also in Arabic, waiting till the boy nods jerkily to lean over and slide the glock across the floor towards him. The kid doesn’t take his eyes off him as Clay drops to his knees, keeping his cuffed hands up and trying to look as non-threatening as possible. 

“ _I found him, in the east wing. Hurry!_ ” 

He calls loudly over his shoulder, and there’s an answering shout and the sound of running feet. A few seconds later two more men appear at the end of the hallway, and just like that it’s over. All Clay can do is hope that they still find him valuable enough to keep alive, and that someone heard his S.O.S. Even as they converge on him though, knocking him roughly to the floor, he finds he doesn’t regret his choice. He has enough blood on his hands, he doesn’t need more. 


	8. chapter eight

They break his ankle after his little jailbreak; apparently their tolerance for escapees is low. They don’t bother to uncuff his wrists either, just throw him unceremoniously back in his cell and lock the door. Clay wouldn’t be surprised if they’re thinking about throwing away the key too considering they’ve got two graves to dig today thanks to him. Dragging himself over with his one good leg Clay collapses onto his mattress, completely and utterly spent. His arms and shoulders ache fiercely now that the adrenaline’s run it’s course, muscles burning. He’s done as much as he could, pushed himself past his limits. Whatever happens next is out of his hands. 

There’s some odd of kind of solace to accepting that fact, accepting that he’s done his best. It will either be enough or it won’t. And Clay has never been one for giving up, but this feels less like a surrender and more handing over the reigns. Like admitting that there are some things he cannot change on his own, no matter how hard he tries. It’s taken him so long to learn that lesson, taken so much pain to finally understand. 

He’d always been a stubborn kid that way, driving his grandparents crazy with an obstinacy that bordered on insanity. Stubborn as a mule his grandpa always used to say, tone half-affectionate and half-exasperated. And he’d thought that’s how he’d make it through, by throwing himself at the wall again and again and again till it broke. By being the very best he could, and fuck a helping hand. It wasn’t till he got drafted to Bravo that he started to understand what it meant to be a team, to realize it was okay to lean on other people sometimes. That he couldn’t do it all on his own, and maybe more importantly, that he didn’t have to. He wonders if they know how much that means

That night when he drifts off to sleep, it’s with a feeling that’s not quite peace, but sits close enough. 

They come for him again the next morning. The first sign that something is wrong is that they don’t bag him when they pull him out of the room, just bundle him down the stairs. It’s not until they take him outside instead of to the classroom that he realizes this is the end, for real this time. They don’t care if he sees where he is, which means he’s not going to live long enough to tell anyone else. From the brief glance he gets it looks like the outskirts of a small town, but before he can try and clock any landmarks they’re dragging him around the corner of the building into a small courtyard. There are a few scraggly bushes and trees dotted along the edges of the space, like somebody had tried to plant a garden here once. They’re all dead or most of the way there now though, Clay can’t imagine anyone here bothered with landscaping upkeep once this stopped being a school and turned into something else. 

And Clay thinks that might be what he hates the most about war, the way it infects everything around it like a virus. The way it turns schools into prisons and children into adults before their time and kind people into cruel ones. The way it takes and it takes and it takes, and never leaves anything behind but waste and death and sorrow. The way it chews a person up and spits out something less then they were, diminished somehow. And there’s a certain irony to it, considering what his job is but Clay would be happy to never work another day in his life if he didn’t have to, he would be happy to hang his helmet up and put his gun down. Clay lives in war, but he has never loved it. He’s lived in it, and now he’s going to die in it too.

They shove him down, and as he hits the unforgiving ground hard enough to bruise he realizes this is it. This is how he’s going to die, on his knees in the dirt in a town whose name he doesn’t know, ungraceful and banal and without ceremony. Somehow though, he’s oddly okay with it. He thinks maybe he made peace with his death back in the desert with Nowak, and it doesn’t really scare him anymore. Or maybe he’s just tired of waiting on a knife’s edge, tired of waiting and waiting and waiting. Tired of being afraid. And he kept his promise to Brian, he fought. He fought as long as he could and as hard as he could and it just wasn’t enough, in the end. He hopes they know that, his team, that he fought until he couldn’t anymore. That he didn’t give up. It seems important that they know that. He thinks they will.

The man in front of him brings a gun up, so close Clay can see the fine scratches along the barrel, the patch of rust beneath the muzzle where the metal wasn’t cleaned right. He wonders if Stella was right after all; that this ending was just an inevitability, that there was never any chance for him at all. But then he thinks about being eight and lying on the porch with his grandma in Liberia watching the stars, about he never really thought he’d even make it this far. Maybe it’s not about the end after all, but the path you took to get there. He’s had a harder path then most perhaps, but it’s one he’s proud of. And what he told Nowak in that desert days ago was true, he wouldn’t change a damn thing. Looking up he takes a deep breath, lets the bright blue sky burn away the grimy haze of his cell that clings to him even here. 

A second later the report of a single shot echoes against the walls of the surrounding buildings, and Clay feels something warm spray across his face. There’s no pain though, and when Clay blinks his eyes open it’s just in time to see the man who was about to execute him crumple to the ground missing part of his head. There’s a fraction of a second of silence, and then courtyard erupts into a firefight. He feels something lick its way along his side, like a tongue of fire. The impact sends him to the ground and Clay has just enough presence of mind left in him to drop to the ground and roll out of the way. The movement sends a shooting pang of agony licking it’s way up his broken leg, like fire and ice and his nerves scream at him in protest and it’s the straw that breaks the camels back.

He blinks, and he’s on his ass next to Brian in the sand. Brian smiles at him, pushing himself to his feet. 

“Looks like your boys found you after all.” 

He says, starting to shuck the fringed monstrosity he’s wearing off. Clay watches him with a lump in the pit of his stomach that won’t go away. 

“What are you doing?”

He asks, already knowing but wishing he didn’t. Brian pauses, letting the ugly shirt hang in his hands as he looks out across the waves. 

“I’m thinking about taking a swim. Heard the water’s nice.”

He says finally, with a crooked grin, eyes drifting out to the horizon.

“I miss you. I’m not sure how to stop missing you.”

Clay whispers, feeling salt sting at his eyes that has nothing to do with the sea breeze. 

“I know.” Brian replies, so gently it hurts a little. “I think the trick is you that you never really stop missing people, but you keep going anyways. And you learn to live with missing them, y’know” 

And Clay wants to believe him, he really does, but he thinks about all the people he he’s lost. Stella, Adam, his grandparents, his mom. How even years later their memory still stings in his chest. Maybe there’s a lesson in here somewhere about letting go that he should take to heart if he survives. In the distance Clay hears someone shouting his name, echoing faintly in his ears. 

“It sounds like it’s time for you to go back,”

Brian says, a little wistful, a little bittersweet, finally letting the shirt drop to the sand.

“What if I don’t want to go back, what if I want to stay with you?”

Clay asks recklessly. And he’s not sure if he really does want to stay but all he think in the moment is that he won’t survive watching Brian leave. Not like this. Not again. Brian just shakes his head, taking a step towards the edge of the water. 

“Come on, Clay. I think we both know you can’t do that. And I don’t think you really want to either. You got people waiting on you, good people. People that are worth hanging on for. Now, I really gotta get going, don’t let me see you back here anytime soon, huh?”

With a last crooked bittersweet grin he starts to wade into the water, the tide soon lapping at his knees then his hips then his chest. Clay scrambles to his feet, running after him.

“Brian, no, Brian! Don’t leave again, Brian, goddammit just come back!”

He screams, voice tearing at his throat till he tastes blood, but all his cries and pleas do nothing as Brian slowly sinks away, head disappearing beneath the waves. And it feels like standing in that field searching for his face in the crowd all over again, feels like watching the paramedics roll the body bag into the ambulance with that terrible numbness in his chest. As the beach and the water and the sun around him start to fade Clay stumbles to his knees, grasping nothing but sand in his fingers. 

He blinks his eyes open slowly, bracing against the light and noise and sound that comes with his return to the real world. The gunfire has died down but there’s someone shouting his name, hands gentle but insistent on his shoulders as they shake him, and a dull aching pain in his side he doesn’t recognize. He squints up at the blurry figure leaning over him, the dark curls of hair flipping across their forehead and sun bronzed skin. 

“Brian?” He rasps, feeling something wet escape the corners of his eyes and slip down his face. “Brian don’t leave, please.”

The man’s lips turn down at the edges, concern creasing his forehead, and Clay notices his eyes are wrong. Not brown but green, and there’s no freckles dotted across his cheeks. 

“Hey, hey, I’m not leaving, just stay down okay? We got you buddy.” Brock says soothingly, then calls over his shoulder, “Hey, Trent, he’s not looking so good.” 

Trent he thinks, he knows Trent. Of course he knows Trent. There are hands on him then, on his cheek, his neck, patting down his body. They pause at his side, the aching pain turning into a fire. 

“Shit, Trent, he’s bleeding pretty bad I think he got tagged.”

The voice says again, sharp and urgent and worried now, not like before. Clay can feel it now, the warm wetness trickling down his stomach. He knows that’s not good, but he can’t really bring himself too care. His eyes are heavy and they start to flutter closed once more, he can feel now a different sort of darkness that awaits him from before. Deeper and warmer and softer around the edges, it reaches for him like the embrace of a well loved blanket. He can feel fingers tighten on his shoulders shaking him gently, feel an insistent hand on his cheek, and he blinks wearily as the sky above him swims and spins. 

“Hey! Hey, come on Clay stay with us, keep you eyes open.”

Another voice chimes in, and somehow it’s an order even thought it’s not. Somehow it reaches deep inside Clay and wraps its fingers something deep inside of him and _pulls_ , but even that is not enough. He just doesn’t have anything left to fight with. He tries to tell them that, but his lips are numb and his tongue won’t move and he starts to drift away, not to the beach, but to the inky black nothingness of real unconsciousness. The last thing he hears before he disappears into it is someone say _we got you_ in a thick Texas drawl, and it brings him a feeling of comfort he hasn’t had in a long time. After that there’s just darkness, and Clay gives himself over to it gratefully. 


	9. chapter nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey sorry I disappeared for like a month there! The holiday's got kind of busy, but I'm back and hope you all enjoy.

Clay doesn’t remember much after that. He sleeps maybe, and doesn’t dream. When he is awake it feels surreal and blurry, like he’s not quite in his own body. There’s flashes of places he barely recognizes, a slice of clear blue sky out the side of a helicopter, the pale stained white canvas of a medical tent roof, the cavernous shadows of a C-130. But every time he feels himself retreat back into the darkness, the safety there. In the darkness it doesn’t hurt to move, to remember. 

When he finally wakes up for real he’s in a hospital bed. It’s clean and bright and cool, and it smells slightly of air freshener and antiseptic. It’s too much and not enough all at once and for a second Clay has to close his eyes against the blinding whiteness of it all. There’s a blanket over his legs and he runs his hands across it, feels the gentle scratch of the cotton polyester blend against his fingertips, the way the fibers catch against his chapped skin. It’s softer then anything he’s felt in so long. When he opens his eyes again he notices that Jason’s there, sitting awkwardly in a too small chair pulled up to the side of Clay’s bed, arms crossed over his chest and eyelids flickering shut. 

He looks tired, as tired as Clay feels, and there are lines in his face Clay doesn’t remember. For some reason looking at Jason makes Clay want to cry, so he looks away, eyes stinging. It doesn’t make sense, because he should be happy to see Jason and he is but it’s like he’s not sure how to process being happy anymore, not when fear and grief and anger were all he felt for so long. Like his body doesn’t remember the motions. He reaches up to swipe quickly across his cheeks, feeling salt burn in fine cuts in his skin. His movement must alert Jason that he’s conscious and he jerks sharply awake in his chair, scrubbing a hand down his face in a quick motion and leaning forward intently.

“Hey, hey, you with me, buddy?”

He says, voice raspy with sleep and uncharacteristically soft. Clay would almost say he sounds nervous, if he didn’t know better. He nods slowly, trying to sit up a little and Jason immediately surges forward, one hand behind his back to help him. Clay nearly flinches from the tenderness in it. 

“It’s good to see you back with the living,” Jason continues once Clay’s settled against a few stiff pillows, voice pointedly casual. “Sure took your sweet time with it.”

And it’s a joke but there’s too much relief, too much fear behind it too be funny to either of them. 

“I was-” Clay’s voice catches in his throat and he winces, swallowing, before trying again. “I was out for a while?” 

It’s Jason’s turn to nod.

“Yeah, nearly a four days. You, uh, you woke up a few times on the plane back stateside but you weren’t really…” He trails off for a moment, a shadow passing over his face that makes Clay’s stomach twist uncomfortably. “Anyways, it’s just… it’s good to see you up.”

It’s only been a few weeks since he last saw Jason, but it feels like so much longer. Like he’s forgotten how to talk to other people when they aren’t screaming questions in his face and beating the shit out of him. Jason watches him carefully, and his eyes are carefully scrutinizing, the way they get when he’s trying to size up a target. Clay doesn’t like it and tilts his head down, focusing on a scuff in the linoleum by Jason’s feet instead. There’s a second of heavy silence, then Jason clears his throat a little awkwardly. 

“So, how you feeling? They got you hooked up to the good stuff?”

He asks, voice bright like a new copper penny, so bright Clay can nearly taste the tang of metal in his mouth. And like a penny the shine’s only skin deep. Clay shrugs one-shouldered, forcing himself to look up and meet Jason’s eyes and offer him half a smile. 

“Yeah, uh, don’t really feel anything right now.”

And it’s true, the IV in the back of his hand dulls the pain of his broken leg and all his healing bruises and the stitched up bullet hole in his side, hiding it all under a thick cottony haze. But he doesn’t feel much else either, not victory or relief or absolution. He just feels…empty. Empty and tired, like he could sleep for a week straight and still want more. 

“Good, good. That’s good. Got everyone kind of worried back there, with the shit you pulled when we found you.”

Clay winces, already sure he doesn’t want to hear whatever comes next. He doesn’t say that though. 

“Oh… don’t really remember much to be honest. I was…I was pretty out of it at the end there.”

“Yeah, you scared the shit out of Brock.” Jason says, half-smiling in a way that makes it seem like it’s not really that funny. “Called him Brian, started crying, and then passed out again. You were bleeding all over the place.”

Clay feels his cheeks heat in embarrassment, and as if he can sense it Jason immediately shakes his head. 

“Hey, could have been way worse. One time Sonny got his bell rung pretty good after an RPG hit, puked all over Trent’s pants during exfil.”

Clay feels his lips tug up at that almost reflexively, and he lets out a short laugh then winces when it tugs wrong at something. Jason frowns jolting halfway out of his chair, one hand coming up to hover uselessly in front of Clay. 

“Woah, woah, hey, Clay, just take it easy. You’re…you’re still pretty beat up. Just take it easy man.” 

Clay nods, settling back into the bed. He’s not used to the gentleness here yet, not used to soft pillows behind his back and cleans sheets over his legs and the concern in Jason’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to do with all this kindness, so instead he changes the subject. 

“How, uh, how long did they have me? I sorta-it got hard to keep track of the days, y’know.” 

“Almost three weeks, 18 days.” 

Jason says, very quietly, and his voice is thick with something. Guilt maybe, or regret. He shouldn’t feel that way over something that wasn’t his fault, Clay thinks, and he tells Jason so. There’s a brief second then where Jason’s face sort of caves in on itself, like an implosion in slow motion, a building collapsing from the inside out. He recovers himself quickly though, expression smoothing over even if his hands are clenched white knuckled together in his lap. 

“Maybe.” 

He says tightly, but Clay gets the sense he doesn’t really believe it. Before he can press any further Jason takes a deep breath, unclenching his hands and splaying them palms down on his thighs.

“Clay.” He says, suddenly comfortably solemn, “What happened….we should talk-”

Clay knows what’s going to come next, we should talk about what happened to you. Assess the damage, see if it’s fixable, see if the cracks run too deep. He knows what’s coming next, and he desperately fiercely doesn’t want too. Doesn’t want to talk about that classroom slowly decaying into the desert or the flower carved in the desk or the cracked hole in the wall. He’ll have to eventually, he knows, if only to see what secrets he might have spilled. But he doesn’t want to yet, not here, not with Jason. He grasps at something, anything to divert Jason’s attention way from the elephant in the room.

“I know this is a long shot,” he says in a rush, words tumbling over each other in an attempt to get out of his mouth, “But the other guy they were holding there, the journalist, Nowak. Did you find his, uh, his body?”

His stomach clenches with guilt as Jason’s brow furrows. He shouldn’t use Nowak like this, as an excuse, a shield to deflect what Clay doesn’t want to face yet; isn’t strong enough to face, some small part of him supplies. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but he does it anyways and hates himself a little for it. Jason pauses, like he’s weighing his response carefully, like Clay is made of glass and he’ll shatter at a wrong word. Clay might be annoyed by it, if it weren’t probably true. 

“I’m sorry, we didn’t.” Jason replies finally, voice painfully soft. “It was an in and out grab, didn’t have time to sweep the area thoroughly. But I’ll ask around, and if anything turns up I’ll let you know.”

Clay nods, feeling his throat tighten, fingers playing with a loose thread in the blanket over his knees. It isn’t surprising, really. Clay’s not stupid or naïve, he knows that the most likely outcome is that Nowak or whatever’s left of him will never found but his stomach still roils uncomfortably. He deserved better then this. Deserved more. His family deserved more. 

Jason sighs then, putting his hands on the arms of the chair and levering himself to his feet.

“Look, I gotta head out, some dumb fucking debriefing shit they’re making us all do. But I’ll swing by again later, bring the rest of the boys if that’s alright. They’ll want to see you now that you’re…now that you’re up. Sonny’s just about been wearing holes in the floors waiting for you to come around. ”

Clay nods. He wants to see them too, a surge of emotion rising suddenly at the thought, like a stomachache. He’s almost surprised by the intensity of it, the way it cuts through the emptiness that’s settled itself in his chest. 

“Yeah. That uh, that sounds good. Really good. Thanks Jason.”

Jason nods, but even when he smiles the shadow in his eyes doesn’t go away.

“No problem. Now get some rest, see you in a bit.” He says, reaching down to put a gentle hand on Clay’s knee for a second. Before he gets to the door though he pauses, looking back over his shoulder. “And, Clay, we’re all just…we’re all just glad you’re still in one piece.”

As Clay watches him leave he wonders if that’s true. 

Jason keeps his promise though, and that evening he brings the rest of Bravo by. They pile into his room looking anxious and exhausted and relieved all at once. And god, Clay’s missed them so much, missed them like a part of himself. 

Sonny pulls a chair up to the side of his bed, taking his cap off and dragging a nervous hand through his hair. He won’t quite meet Clay’s eyes, gaze skittering along the floor, the walls, anywhere that isn’t Clay’s face. 

“Hey, sunshine, how you feeling? Nurses takin’ good care of you?”

He asks, voice cracking a little. For a long second Clay lets Sonny’s words sit, and he can see the nervous anticipation in his team as they wait. The way Jason’s fingers tap an anxious rhythm on his thigh where he’s leaning against the wall and Ray’s dark eyes don’t flicker away from his for a second. The way Trent’s jaw is clenched tight enough to make his dentist mad and Brock’s arms are crossed protectively across his chest, hands white-knuckled around his arms. The way Sonny still won’t look at him, like he’s afraid of what he might find if he does. And he realizes then how scared they are, all of them. So even though it feels ragged and torn at the edges he smiles because it’s what they need, and maybe it’s what Clay needs too. Something in the room breaks then, like ice splintering in a spring thaw, tension draining out of his team’s shoulders. 

“Yeah.” He says, wanting so badly for it to be true. “Yeah, feeling alright.”

His doctor comes by later, after everyone’s reluctantly gone home or been kicked out by the nurses, to tell him all the ways in which he is not alright. An oblique fracture in his left tibia, four broken or fractured ribs, pneumonia in his left lung, severe muscle strain in his shoulders that might permanently impact his mobility, a through and through bullet wound that apparently only hit him as hard as it did because he was so dehydrated and malnourished, a thousand little cuts and bruises and electrical burns. It’ll be months before he’ll be anywhere near healed enough to operate again, months of PT and recovery time. Clay listens to it all feeling numb and disconnected, like it’s about somebody else. Some other body’s pain, some other person’s trauma. He wonders how long it will take to stop feeling like this, before it all comes rushing back in. He’s not sure if he wants it too or not, he thinks maybe this numbness is the lesser of two evils. 

“You’re coming home with me.” 

Trent says, once the doctors start talking about moving him to outpatient. Clay nearly protests, but then he thinks about sitting alone in the quiet empty silence of his apartment, the way his own thoughts echo against the walls of his head alone in this hospital room, and nods. 

“Alright. Thanks.”

Trent blinks a little, almost like he was expecting Clay to put up more of a fight and now he’s not sure what to do. Clay thinks that before all this, he probably would have. Would have chafed at the coddling and the concern and the constant hovering, now though, he’s realized that being alone is overrated. He’s had his fill of it and then some. 

“Okay, then.” Trent says, with a cautious smile. “I’ll get the spare room set up for you”


	10. chapter ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow sorry for just disappearing! my old computer died and I had to get a new one which took forever and then I lost a solid month to the horror of grad school applications, but I'm back now and hopefully finishing this up soon!

Clay’s alright. Clay’s trying really hard to be alright. 

It’s been a week and a half since he was finally discharged from the hospital and into the practical efficient care of his teammate. Everyone’s come by to visit nearly every day, piling into Trent’s cramped apartment and taking up entirely more space than was really available. It’s nice, really it is, but it all feels a little suffocating. He hates himself as soon as he thinks it, because he knows they’re all just still scared shitless. And he’s not lying when he tells himself it’s nice. To see their faces, hear their voices, just to sit quietly in the chaos of it all. How there’s never a silent moment, how there’s no emptiness here. But sometimes it’s just a lot. Clay spent 18 days in a room by himself with only a voice through the wall as company, and the transition is unsettling. 

Almost worse though are the moments where he’s alone. When Trent’s at the base and all he can do is sit on his comfortable overstuffed couch and click idly through channels on the TV just to have some noise in the apartment that isn’t the sound of his own breathing, his own heartbeat thudding in his ears. His ankle’s still in a heavy boot and he can’t really walk without crutches, confined to tottering around the apartment like a geriatric. He sleeps a lot, mostly because it feels easier than being awake. It’s never restful though and more often than not he wakes up in a cold sweat, dreams lingering at the back of his mind like a bitter taste in his mouth. Trent notices, he knows Trent notices, but he doesn’t push Clay to talk about it. Clay loves him for that. 

He feels odd, like putting on clothes that don’t fit quite right anymore, skin stretched too thin across bones that aren’t his. Feels tired, and old. Old like dust and dirt and the sand that lodged itself under your fingernails and in the creases of your skin. He wants to go back to being the person he was before, but he’s not sure how too. Not sure how to fit into the shape of his life, the imprints of who he once was but he thinks he no longer is. He wants to be himself again, he’s just not sure he knows who that is anymore. It wears on him, the not knowing, the uncertainty. Like always grasping for something that’s just out of reach. 

Finally, it all comes crashing down on his head like a tidal wave.

Clay’s dreaming, a part of him knows that, but it doesn’t make it easier. The smell of blood is thick in his nose and he can feel the heat of the sun on the back of his neck, peeling and blistering the exposed skin. Nowak’s kneeling in front of him, hollow pale blue eyes burning like chips of ice in his long face. There’s so much judgement there, so much pain, and Clay wants to look away but somehow he can’t. 

“You left me.”

Nowak says, scathing and cruel and Clay feels the words like a whip. Like a damnation of sorts. He look down, and suddenly there’s a machete in his hands and his arms are lifting against his will, higher and higher till they start to fall. Clay feels the moment the blade catches flesh then bone, feels the sudden give as it tears through Nowak’s neck. Then the dull thud of something heavy hitting the ground. 

There’s a hand on his shoulder and all of a sudden he’s awake, heart pounding in his chest like he’s run a marathon with his full kit on, the hurried unsteady thump of it echoing in his ears. He swings wildly till the hand stop’s touching him, rolling out of bed and scrabbling blindly across the floor till he feels a wall at his back, operating more on pure panic than anything else. For a moment he just stays there, crouched, as his body nearly vibrates with adrenaline; blood pumping through his veins and ears filled with white noise. There’s a fuzzy indistinct sound he can hear through the rushing beat of his heart, and it takes him a second to realize that it’s Trent talking. 

“-you’re good, Clay, you’re alright. It’s just you and me buddy, we’re okay. You’re okay.”

He recites, over and over like a litany, his voice steady and even and calm. 

“Trent?”

Clay forces out through the lump in his throat, a little shaky, a little uncertain. Trent pauses. 

“Yeah, just me. You back with me Clay?”  
He asks slowly. Clay nods, swallowing a little as the room around him starts to take shape. He’s somehow made it to the kitchen, tucked into a corner between the stove and the refrigerator. The linoleum is cool and slightly sticky under his bare feet, and he can feel the handle of a cabinet digging into his back. He takes a breath, focuses on those feelings, the small hurt of it. 

“Hey, you mind if I get a little closer? I think some of your stitches opened up.”

Trent asks, still so calm and steady and even. 

“No!” Clay replies, so fast it’s embarrassing, panic rising in his throat again. And it doesn’t make sense because Trent is his friend and he’d never hurt him and he knows that, but the thought of someone being close to him right now, touching him, is somehow suffocating. “No, sorry.” he says again, slower this time, “Can you just-just stay there?”

Trent nods, lifting his hands up as he sinks down to a crouch a few feet away from Clay. 

“Yeah, that’s cool. We can just hang out here for a bit, got nowhere better to be. Can you just do me a favor though? There’s a towel right by your head there, can you just grab that and keep some pressure on those stitches in your stomach?”

Clay looks down, and for the first time notices the blood smeared across his abdomen. As soon as he sees it the pain comes too, a low aching throb in time with the beating of his heart. There’s blood on the floor too, dappled across the cabinets like a Pollock painting. In a little bit he’ll feel bad about that he knows, but right now he just silently takes the towel from where it’s hanging on the stove and presses it to the ripped stitches. 

For a while the two of them just sit there on the floor of Trent’s kitchen, till Clay’s heart stops feeling like it’s about to jump out of his chest and he can take a real breath. When the panic finally fades the embarrassment starts to set in, and Clay feels his face flush with shame as the full weight of the moment piles down on top of him. He starts to push himself up, an apology already on his lips, but stumbles and nearly lands on his ass as his booted leg protests. Trent darts quickly forward; reaching a hand out to help Clay to his feet, and this time Clay lets him. 

“Here, take it slow,” He says, guiding Clay towards the kitchen table and helping sink into a chair. “Stay here, I’m going to grab my kit and then we can take care of those stitches, alright?” 

Clay nods slowly, his heading spinning and feeling a little bit like all the airs left the room. Trent gives him a last discerning look before deciding it’s safe to leave him on his own for two seconds and disappearing into the hallway to grab his first aid kit. He’s back in a few seconds, turning on the light and popping the plastic case open, rummaging through the neatly organized supplies for a suture kit. 

“You want any painkillers?” 

He asks, as he starts to pull on a pair of gloves. Clay shakes his head, the last thing he wants right now is drugs clouding his head and pulling him back under to his nightmares.

“Just do it.”

He says shortly, leaning back in his chair and taking a deep breath. What’s a little extra pain after what he’s been through after all.

“You know,” Trent says quietly as he starts to re-do the stitches, “After my convoy hit an IED, I had nightmares about it for months.” 

Clay looks up, surprised.

“Is that, uh, is that how you busted up your arm?”He asks a little awkwardly. Trent just nods, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he sews Clay’s skin together. 

“Yeah. Took a while for the doctors to put me back together physically, but a lot longer for me to put myself back together inside. People don’t think about that as much.” 

Trent’s never told him about what happened before, at least not like this. The broad strokes maybe, but not the details. Clay gets it; there are just certain things that aren’t worth talking about again unless you have to, not worth reliving the past. But apparently Trent’s decided it’s worth it now, to open up an old wound, to spill a little blood. Maybe because Clay just had a panic attack on his kitchen floor because someone touched him. 

“How’d you stop them? The nightmares?”

Trent sighs, sitting up and wiping away the last of the blood on Clay’s stomach with a sheet of gauze, 

“Alright you’re all stitched up.” He says, setting the needle down on the tray in front of him and snapping off his gloves. “Look, this probably isn’t the answer you’re hoping to hear, but really? Only way to stop it is time.”

And Trent’s right, it isn’t the answer Clay wants to hear. He wants action, something he can do, some way to force himself to be okay again. He doesn’t want to sit around on his ass just hoping and praying for the nebulous promise of someday to come. He wants to fix things. But, he thinks, maybe there are somethings you can’t fix. Maybe that’s a lesson he needs to learn. 

Time passes. Clay’s ankle comes out of the boot and his stitches dissolve into a ragged scar and his bruises fade. After about another week or so at Trent’s he moves back into his apartment. Slowly things start to inch their way back to normal. Or maybe not normal, at least not the old normal, but a new kind. Clay settles into an equilibrium of sorts, even if it’s one balanced on a knifes edge. Slowly the world starts to move on and Clay’s still left holding all the pieces, trying to fit them into something that’s whole. 

Other problems start to raise their ugly heads too. Sonny’s been avoiding him, and he’s not sure what to do about it. He’s so busy holding his own broken parts together; he’s not sure how to hold someone else’s together too. But this is Sonny, this is his best friend, so he’s sure as hell gonna try. He sends a few texts, but all he gets back are short one word responses. He still sees him, but only when there’s one or two of the other guys around. Like Sonny’s afraid to be alone in a room with him. It’s frustrating, but like so much else in Clay’s life right now there doesn’t seem to be much he can do about it. It’s a new feeling, helplessness. Or maybe that’s a lie, maybe it’s just been lying in wait, ready to pounce. He thinks about being seven years old, standing at the airport with his small hand in his grandfather’s wrinkled one and watching his dad walk away from him without looking back. He thinks maybe it’s a very old feeling. Maybe it’s one that never really left. 

His small apartment suddenly feels suffocating, like the plain beige walls are slowly inching their way inwards, marching towards him slowly and inexorably. When he closes his eyes he can see the imprint of the cracked pockmarked ceiling of his cell superimposed on the backs of his eyelids, seared permanently into his brain like a brand. And all at once he has to get out, has to be somewhere else or else he thinks he might scream and scream and never stop. So he does, he gets up and slips on a pair of shoes and leaves. Doesn’t grab a jacket or his keys or lock the door behind him just goes. It’s like his minds on autopilot and all it can think of is escape, of movement, of leaving something behind.

He walks. Just picks a direction and goes, limping along on his still barely healed ankle. Lets his feet take him wherever they want to go. It’s less about wanting to go anymore, and more about the going. More about how he needs to just escape the stifling still air inside his apartment, the way he needs to stop thinking about sand and cracked grey concrete and a flower carved into the top of a desk. And Clay needs something, needs and needs and needs, but he’s not sure what it is. 

He feels like he’s fracturing a long a fault-line he didn’t even know he had. Like some chasm has opened up inside of him, deep and dark and hollow. He thinks of how he once read that you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you. He hadn’t understood what it meant the first time he saw it, but he thinks he does now. 

He’s not sure how long he walks, lost in a sort of feverish single-minded haze, and when it finally breaks he looks around and realize he has no idea where he is. His ankle throbs insistently and side aches and he can feel his legs starting to tremble with exhaustion. When he checks his phone it’s to three missed calls from Sonny, one from Jason, and one from Trent, as well as too many text messages to scroll through from pretty much his whole contact list. He hadn’t even felt the phone buzz in his pocket. 

He sits down on the curb, and dials Sonny’s number. He picks up immediately, not even giving Clay a chance to say anything, voice thick with stress and anger and fear. 

“Where the fuck have you been Clay, huh? Everybody’s looking for you, you don’t pick up your phone, you don’t respond to our messages? Your apartment’s empty and the door’s unlocked? What the hell are you thinking? Trent’s havin’ a goddamn heart attack and Jason’s bout two seconds from calling the goddamn cops to find your ass-”

“Sonny.” 

Clay whisper, quiet and even, and Sonny stops so abruptly it sounds like someone hit the mute button. 

“I’m on Lynnhaven and Pritchard, could you come pick me up? Please.”

There’s a long pause, and Clay can hear Sonny breathing through the static of the phone line, ragged and unsteady like he’s been running. 

“Yeah,” He says finally, and he doesn’t sound angry anymore. “Yeah, I’ll be there in ten.”


End file.
